[media-credit name=’TAYLOR HUGHES/Herald illustration’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]State Sen. Alan Lasee can name the cases with ease. Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Child serial killer David Spanbauer. Juan Nieto and Gregorio Morales, accused recently of abducting, raping and burning a woman who somehow survived.

All were accused of committing heinous crimes, but due to Wisconsin’s ban on capital punishment — and in the alleged Nieto and Morales case, the woman’s unlikely survival — none have faced the prospect of the death penalty. According to Lasee, R-Rockland, that needs to change.

“It always seemed to me justice is not served by putting all criminals in prison,” Lasee said. “Some murders merit a different sentence.”

With the state Legislature starting a new session last week, Lasee renewed his call for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Wisconsin.

Those familiar with Lasee should not be surprised by the development. The senator from Rockland, a suburb of Green Bay, has been at the forefront of the movement to reinstate the death penalty since he entered the Senate more than 20 years ago. And this time, Lasee hopes the time is right for his effort to gain an enthusiastic reaction in the Capitol.

The same cannot be said of his previous efforts. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, bills advocating a return of the death penalty failed to make it out of committee on a yearly basis. The issue did gain an unusually high amount of attention in the 1995-96 session, but even then a bill failed to clear the Senate by one vote.

Rather than plunging his bill headfirst into another committee deathtrap, Lasee is trying a new approach this year. To convince his fellow lawmakers of the viability and demand for capital punishment in Wisconsin, Lasee plans to propose a Senate resolution calling for a statewide advisory referendum on the issue.

If the Senate and Assembly approve the resolution, a nonbinding referendum would go on the ballot in a future election. While the results would not change public policy, Lasee hopes the referendum will let legislators become better attuned to the opinions of citizens throughout the state.

Lasee points to several recent developments to suggest his proposal may fare better than bills in the past. Still vivid in the mind of many state citizens is the alleged murder of six hunters in northern Wisconsin late last year, an incident that garnered national media attention.

Additionally, Republicans, who tend to favor capital punishment more often than Democrats, increased their majorities in both houses of the legislature in the November election.

“When Republicans first took control of the Legislature, I thought I could get some movement, but it didn’t happen,” Lasee said. “I think that it is time, given there have been some murders in the news — like the sniper case — to bring it up again. I believe with five new senators this session, maybe there will be some new blood.”

Arthur Thexton, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against the Death Penalty, worries the shift in the Senate’s makeup may give Lasee the traction he has lacked in the past.

“It would be foolish [for us] not to worry, particularly since the whole leadership has changed in the state Senate,” Thexton said. “(Former majority leader) Mary Panzer was a quiet opponent [of the death penalty], and now we’ll hope (new Majority Leader) Dale Schultz will be the same.”

A long history of abolition

Still, any change to Wisconsin’s prohibition against the death penalty would run counter to longstanding precedent in the state.

When a jury convicted John McCaffary of Kenosha of murder for drowning his wife in a well in 1851, a judge handed down what would prove to be the first and only death sentence under state law in Wisconsin history.

McCaffary’s public hanging emboldened reformers left over from the days prior to statehood, and in 1853, Gov. Leonard Farwell signed a bill into law abolishing capital punishment in Wisconsin.

“One of the reasons the Legislature abolished the death penalty is that the McCaffary hanging revealed the seedy side of society,” said John Huebscher, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, a group opposed to capital punishment. “They recognized when the state takes a life, it affects everybody.”

The statute has stood for more than 150 years, making Wisconsin owner of a longer ban than any other state in the nation. Challenges to the law have emerged from time to time, but none have seriously threatened to reverse the 1853 law.

Wisconsin today is one of only 12 states without capital punishment.

Thexton credits the distinction for the state’s low crime rate, arguing the death penalty does not serve to deter violent crime.

“Almost all murders occur in the heat of passion,” Thexton, a former Dane County deputy sheriff, said. “The hunter case was a matter of anger and poor judgment — and the death penalty is no deterrent to that.”

But Marquette University political science professor and death penalty supporter John McAdams, who has studied the issue extensively, says conventional thinking about the death penalty’s effectiveness in preventing crime has changed in recent years.

“The evidence, until recently, said it doesn’t [deter violent crime], but now there is a whole new generation of studies showing there is a deterrent effect,” McAdams said. “If it might be a deterrent, I don’t want to risk the lives of innocent people. As long as there’s a possibility, I think we should use it.”

Lasee says any possible deterrent effect is beyond the point — the death penalty, rather, is simply a matter of fitting the crime with the proper punishment.

“I’ve never argued that it’s a deterrent,” Lasee said. “I’m more interested in having the proper punishment for the type of crime committed.”

Cost, accuracy debated

Although there is no definitive study on the costs of capital punishment, many believe life imprisonment without parole is a cheaper option. Capital cases are frequently vigorously appealed. Indeed, those executed in 2003 spent an average of nearly 11 years on death row, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

In a state with budget problems, Thexton claims taxpayers would still be paying to prosecute Dahmer if the death penalty existed in Wisconsin.

McAdams, however, insists steps can be taken to speed up the process and reduce costs.

“It’s an odd issue to be raised by opponents of the death penalty because it’s their actions that raise the costs, by demanding appeal after appeal,” he said.

Thexton said any effort to expedite the appeals process would result in the killing of innocent people. Even with exhaustive legal proceedings, he worries the system cannot prevent innocent people from being put to death.

Similar fears spurred then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan to commute the death sentences of all of the state’s death row members in 2003.

“As long as human beings are administering the system, there will be human error, because, by definition, humans are prone to error,” Thexton asserted.

Lasee stresses his system would safeguard against such potentially fatal errors through the use of improved technology. No DNA evidence would mean no execution, according to Lasee.

“I want to stress the death penalty is not warranted in all cases,” he said. “It’s only applicable when there is no doubt that there were horrendous multiple murders, murders of children or police officers.”

Lasee advocates the use of lethal injection for the killing, a method that has accounted for the vast majority of executions nationally in recent years.

Effort uncertain

If past surveys are any indication, a potential referendum likely will find majority support for the death penalty in the state. A 2000 St. Norbert College Survey Center poll revealed support from 65 percent of the state, while a 2003 Badger Poll found 64 percent of the state’s citizens back the death penalty.

But 150-year-old statutes do not go away easily, and most supporters of reinstating the death penalty in Wisconsin say it will continue to be an uphill battle.

The Legislature is currently locked in debate over health care and tax freezes, and with the next biennial budget approaching, the death penalty is not considered a priority.

Any bill would also have to overcome a likely veto from Gov. Jim Doyle, the former state attorney general who has opposed capital punishment.

Even the hunter case may not sufficiently boost public demand, McAdams says, noting the frenzied attention surrounding Dahmer in the early ’90s did not advance the issue.

Despite the long odds, Lasee claims the subject needs to be discussed. He said the case of Nieto and Morales in Brown County has particularly moved him to keep pushing for the death penalty.

The two defendants in that case, which has yet to go to trial, are accused of kidnapping a woman from a bar in 2003, repeatedly raping her in a field, dousing her with lighter fluid and setting her on fire. Nieto and Morales allegedly left the victim for dead in a field, only miles from Lasee’s Rockland home.

“It strikes pretty close to home when you find that’s happening a mile from where you live,” Lasee said. “She suffered excruciating pain, and had she died and those two people are convicted, the penalty ought to be more severe than life imprisonment.”