USA - Nebraska. The secretary of state, announced today that there are enough signatures to block death penalty repeal

John Gale, the secretary of state, announced today that death penalty supporters have gathered enough valid signatures to prevent a law repealing capital punishment from going into effect until the November 2016 election. Nebraska lawmakers abolished the death penalty in May with LB 268, prompting a petition drive for a ballot measure to overturn their decision. The issue had already qualified for the ballot, but Friday's announcement confirms that the petition drive also succeeded in postponing the repeal. County certifications have been received by the Secretary of State within the 40 days allowed by law. Petition sponsors needed 113,883 signatures to suspend the repeal and place it on the ballot, in addition to meeting signature thresholds in at least 38 of Nebraska's 93 counties. Gale said county election officials verified more than 143,000 signatures, and the petition circulators met the minimum signature threshold in 85 counties. With the repeal law suspended, would prosecutors once again seek the penalty when trying murder cases? Could the governor's so far fruitless efforts to obtain lethal injection drugs succeed? And could an execution take place in the more than yearlong interim before the statewide referendum on the issue next November, as Nebraskans continue to be roiled by a debate over the death penalty? "The thing is a total mess," said Eric Berger, a law professor at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, who has written extensively on capital punishment. "It's uncharted territory for everybody." Mr. Berger said that even the current status of the 10 men on death row - including whether they are legally on death row at all - could be seen as uncertain. "My guess is that this would ultimately be a losing argument," he said, "but there's at least a nonfrivolous argument that they could not be executed because their death sentences had been removed." Complicating matters further is a significant legal challenge that could invalidate the petition drive. In September, opponents of the death penalty filed a lawsuit against John Gale, the Nebraska secretary of state, arguing that Governor Ricketts should have been listed as a sponsor of the petition effort, as required by Nebraska law, given that he was a major financial contributor to the signature drive. The lawsuit says Governor Ricketts "personally and/or through his close advisers and agents managed, organized and controlled the referendum campaign." Governor Ricketts personally donated $200,000 to Nebraskans for the Death Penalty, the group that organized the petition drive and spent about 900.000 dollars. A second lawsuit filed in September said the language on the petition drive was "unlawfully misleading." The lawsuit, which names Mr. Gale and Doug Peterson, the attorney general, says that the question posed to voters through the petition drive inaccurately suggests that the death penalty could be replaced with a sentence less than life imprisonment. Laura Strimple, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, declined to comment on the continuing litigation. Nebraska hasn't executed an inmate since 1997, and the state currently lacks 2 of the 3 drugs in its protocol. The department of correctional services spent more than $54,000 to buy the drugs from a supplier in India, but the US Food and Drug Administration said they can't be legally imported. Nebraska currently has 10 men on death row.