Nevada Coalition Against the Death Penalty
100 signatures reached
To: NV Policymakers
Urge NV officials to End the Death Penalty
This campaign has ended.
The death penalty in Nevada is costly, ineffective, racially and economically biased, and does nothing to make us safer.
A 2014 cost audit commissioned by the Nevada legislature revealed that the average death penalty case costs at least half a million dollars more than a case in which the death penalty is not sought. Meanwhile, victims’ family members get no closure because the penalty is rarely, if ever, carried out. The death penalty is an expensive false promise, fraught with a legacy of misconduct, bias, and serious concerns around executing innocent people.
Our state is facing serious economic shortfalls and is part of a national discussion around dismantling systems of white supremacy and racial terrorism. It is the role of our leaders to make the decisions necessary to provide equity and true justice for all. We urge all of our state's elected officials to cut the death penalty, before considering any budgetary cuts to public services, victims' services, or public safety, and reinvesting those savings back into the communities that have been harmed the most by the discriminatory and arbitrary administration of the death penalty in Nevada, especially as we consider the economic aftershocks of COVID-19.
Why is this important?
In April 2020, the state of Nevada agreed to relinquish its supply of drugs intended for executions to the pharmaceutical companies who manufactured them, as part of a settlement agreement in the case of Alvogen, Inc. v. Nevada. The state no longer has the means to carry out an execution, yet prosecutors continue to spend considerable funds pursuing the death penalty.
We believe that the error-prone nature of the death penalty (nearly 1 in 3 cases have errors warranting retrial or re-sentencing), its bias against the indigent, Black people, and all people of color, its lack of deterrent effect, and the sheer cost of pursuing it should convince our leaders to put an end to the practice before cutting budgets for services that Nevadan's most vulnerable continue to urgently need, at a higher rate than ever before.