Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg has asked the...

Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg has asked the state's Supreme Court to decide whether Nebraska can continue sentencing people to death despite the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Ring v. Arizona. In Nebraska, judges or juries can determine a defendant's guilt or innocence, but only judges have handed down death sentences since state lawmakers decided in the 1970s that there was the potential of bias by juries. Stenberg contends that since state law says a judge or a jury must sentence capital defendants, jurors could be asked whether prosecutors proved any aggravating circumstances that are required to issue a death sentence. This "special verdict" would then allow judges to sentence defendants based on the jury's findings. While special verdicts are used in Nebraska civil cases, defense attorneys have argued that a 1982 decision by the Nebraska Supreme Court found that "special verdicts" are not applicable to criminal prosecutions.