Sometimes there’s only two or three people in front of the Governor’s Mansion when noon hits on a Monday. But for 30 years, someone's always shown up.
Alongside shifting policies on capital punishment, Nebraskans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty has seen ebbs and flows in its 30 years of weekly demonstrations in front of the Governor's Mansion. Yet the group has continued to this day, with a handful of committed members who have been there since the beginning.
The demonstrations can range from a couple of people to 10 to 12, group members said, depending on current events in the state. Monday's event brought out around 20 people to commemorate the start of the group's demonstrations 30 years ago.
The first gathering was in June 1991 on the night convicted murderer Harold Lamont Otey was scheduled to be executed.
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Fran Kaye, a retired University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor, remembers. The group was gathered outside of the Governor’s Mansion waiting to hear if the execution would be carried out, she said. She was with Otey's mother and brother when they heard Otey wouldn't be executed that night.
Though his execution was stayed in 1991, Otey was sent to the electric chair in 1994.
“All you get is another dead person,” Kaye said. “All you get is another family grieving.”
Otey was the first person to be executed after the death penalty was reinstated in Nebraska in 1976. The last execution before Otey’s was Charles Starkweather in 1959.
Mary Pipher said the Otey case was what prompted her to begin working against the death penalty in Nebraska.
“He was a man who had committed a heinous murder, but he had done it when he was a very young man and really messed up on drugs and alcohol after a really bad life," she said.
Since that first demonstration, members of the group, first known as Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty, have shown up at noon on Mondays.
Kaye said she’s been there nearly every week, unless she is out of town.
“It's human-imposed; it can be human-changed,” she said. “Therefore, we can try and put pressure on the government and remind people that the death penalty is a bad idea.”
The anti-death penalty cause in Nebraska seemed to have a big win in 2015, when the Legislature overturned capital punishment in the state by overriding Gov. Pete Ricketts’ veto.
“We thought, well, we'll not have to come out here anymore,” Christy Hargesheimer, the Nebraska State Death Penalty Abolition coordinator, said.
However, Ricketts was among the leaders ofa successful petition drive to suspend the repeal until a public vote and in the 2016 election voters rejected the repeal.
Kaye said organizing in front of the Governor's Mansion and across from the Capitol each week is symbolic, given the role of both in the state's death penalty law.
“The front of the Capitol says: justice, mercy, wisdom,” she said. “We've decided to drop off mercy. That used to be important; it's not anymore, so we stand with the Capitol on one side and the Governor's Mansion on the other side, to remember that mercy is part of what this government has set out to do.”
The most recent person to be executed in Nebraska was Carey Dean Moore by lethal injection on Aug. 14, 2018. Moore had been convicted of murdering two cab drivers in Omaha in 1979, a crime he committed when he was 21. At the time of his execution, he was 60.
“He had been on death row for forever,” Kaye said. “He was no danger to anybody. Even the families of his victims were not calling for him to die.”
Nebraska has 12 men on death row, including Aubrey Trail who was sentenced to die earlier this month for the murder and dismemberment of Sydney Loofe.
While the state has continued to sentence people to death for the most heinous of murders, state officials have acknowledged that they are not able to obtain drugs to administer lethal injection.
Demonstrators who gathered on Monday listed many reasons for their stark opposition to the death penalty: cases where innocent people are executed, disproportionate numbers of poor people and people of color sentenced to death and moral opposition to state-sanctioned deaths.
Margaret Vrana, another demonstrator who joined the vigils 30 years ago, said she doesn’t know if they are going to change anyone’s mind, but she appreciates the people who drive or walk by and thank the group for what they’re doing or have a conversation.
Pipher said it’s been frustrating to see the death penalty reinstated in the state, but she isn’t giving up.
“Most of the causes I've worked for I don't work for because I think I'm gonna win,” she said. "I work for them because I think it's the right thing to do.”