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Saturday, 13 June 2015 M*A*S*H actor Mike Farrell brought his anti-death penalty message to Oregon Friday. Activist Farrell is head of Death Penalty Focus in San Francisco.Although best known for his role on the television series “M*A*S*H,” Mike Farrell also has a longer history as an activist for human rights and against the death penalty.

He came to Oregon to talk about those passions with opponents of the state’s death penalty.

Support for the death penalty is waning. Indiana joins the ranks of states without capital punishment Support for the death penalty is waning across America.

We see it most startlingly in the recent vote by Nebraska’s one-house Legislature. By a veto-proof margin, the Nebraska Senate voted to eliminate the death penalty. Nebraska is a red state. Its governor says he’ll veto the statute. But he would have to move two senators off their “no” votes.

Also recently, in blue Boston there was little popular support for giving the death penalty to the Boston Marathon bomber. The family of one victim said they favored a life sentence so they would not have to relive the crime at the successive appeals that come with death penalties.

Register Guard Editorial:
Death-penalty politics shift: It’s time for Oregon to have statewide discussion
Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts says he plans to veto a bill passed last week that would abolish his state’s death penalty, declaring “the Legislature is out of touch with Nebraskans.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 17, 2014
(SALEM, Oregon) Death sentences in Oregon declined in 2014, with only one new death sentence this year. This single sentence represents a 42% decline over the last ten years. According to the 2014 Death Penalty report, issued today by the Death Penalty Information Center, in Washington DC, nationwide, there were 72 new death sentences in 2014, a 40-year low.