By MORGAN LEE
Associated Press
SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez stepped up pressure on lawmakers Tuesday to consider reinstating the death penalty by promising to add the issue to a legislative agenda for a pending special session that was aimed solely at fixing the state’s budget shortfall.
The second-term Republican governor and former district attorney said that she wants the death penalty as an option for convicted killers of police, children and corrections officers.
New Mexico repealed the death penalty in 2009 before Martinez took office by replacing provisions for lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without parole.
The move by Martinez seeks a rare reversal even as capital punishment has fallen out of favor in many states. It could compel local lawmakers to take a public stand on capital punishment ahead of November elections for the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives and Democrat-dominated state Senate.
“Cop killers and child murderers deserve the ultimate punishment,” Martinez said in a written statement. “If you kill an officer, you deserve the death penalty. If you kill a child, you deserve the death penalty. It’s time we say enough is enough.”
Martinez unsuccessfully backed legislation to reinstate the death penalty shortly after taking office in 2011, when Democrats held a majority in both chambers of the Legislature.
Her push to restore capital punishment follows the killings in southern New Mexico of two police officers in separate shootings in August and September by wanted fugitives, plus last month’s horrific sexual assault, killing and dismemberment of a 10-year-old New Mexico girl in Albuquerque.
New Mexico executed nine men starting in 1933 until more than seven decades later when it abolished the death penalty.
The state’s most recent execution in 2001 of child-killer Terry Clark was its first since 1960. Clark raped and murdered a 9-year-old girl in 1986 a year after he was convicted of raping another young girl.
Former Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, cited flaws in how the death penalty was applied when he signed the legislation that abolished it — saying the criminal justice system must be perfect to be used to put someone to death.
New Mexico still has two inmates on death row. Timothy Allen and Robert Fry were convicted and sentenced to death for murders committed years before the 2009 repeal.
Capital punishment currently is authorized in 30 states. States including Illinois, Maryland, Connecticut and Maryland abolished the death penalty through legislation after New Mexico, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Last month, Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional.
New Mexico state lawmakers are calling for a special session to address a half-billion dollar general fund shortfall.
The governor also wants the special session to include consideration of a three-strikes sentencing law for repeat violent offenders that failed to win legislative approval earlier this year.
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