House Defeats Death Penalty Constitutional Amendment
The House defeated House Bill 301, a bill that serves as a Constitutional Amendment to ban the death penalty in Delaware. Constitutional Amendments require a two-thirds majority vote, rather than a simple majority vote, to pass, and then if the Amendmen…
The House defeated House Bill 301, a bill that serves as a Constitutional Amendment to ban the death penalty in Delaware. Constitutional Amendments require a two-thirds majority vote, rather than a simple majority vote, to pass, and then if the Amendment passes both chambers, it has to be passed again by a two thirds majority in both chambers in the next session of the General Assembly. So it is a high bar.
And you may be thinking, what a minute, didn't the General Assembly last week pass a bill banning the death penalty. Yes, they did. But it was only a law, not a Constitutional Amendment.
The vote on the Constitutional Amendment was 24-15-2, with is four votes short of the 28 votes needed for the two thirds majority. Even if Democrats Bill Carson and Pete Schwartzkopf had voted yes (they went not voting), we would still need two Republican votes to get to 28. And they were not coming yesterday.
HB301 - Constitutional Amendment Banning the Death Penalty
Currrent Status - House Defeated 24-15-2.
House Sponsors - Lynn, Morrison, Baumbach, Harris, Neal, Romer, Wilson-Anton
Senate Sponsors - Gay, Hoffner
House Yes Votes - Baumbach Bolden Bush Carson Chukwuocha Cooke Dorsey-Walker Griffith Harris Heffernan Johnson Lambert Longhurst Lynn Matthews Minor-Brown Moore Morrison Neal Osienski Parker-Selby Phillips Romer Schwartzkopf Williams Wilson-Anton
Senate Yes Votes -
House No Votes - Collins Dukes Gray Hensley Hilovsky Jones-Giltner, Morris Postles Ramone Short Shupe Smith Spiegelman Vanderwende Yearick
Senate No Votes -
House Absents or Not Voting - Schwartzkopf, Carson
Senate Absent or Not Voting -
Representative Sherry Dorsey Walker issued the following statement: "The General Assembly's passage of House Bill 70 on Thursday gave hope of a brighter future for the State of Delaware. However, the House's failure to pass House Bill 301 shows us that there are legislators who believe that the decision as to whether someone should live or die still belongs in the hands of the state."
"Between 1972 and 2016, the state's capital sentencing procedure changed five times. By explicitly adding the prohibition of the death penalty to the Delaware Constitution, HB 301 would have ensured that there would be no reemergence of the punishment moving forward."
"The death penalty is cruel, unjust, racially biased, and will always carry the imminent risk of executing an innocent person. As a State, we must stand firmly against it."
"House Bill 70, which will eliminate the death penalty and instruct that any adult convicted of first–degree murder to instead be sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of probation, parole, or any other sentence reduction, ensures that Delawareans are protected once it is signed into law. Thank you to my colleagues who voted in favor of HB 301. It is my hope that the 153rd General Assembly continues the fight we began this year, and are able to successfully enshrine the prohibition of the death penalty in the Delaware Constitution."
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