Lori Pilger – Aug 9, 2023 – Lincoln Journal Star

Aubrey Trail is wheeled out of a Saline County courtroom in 2021 after being sentenced to death in the killing of Sydney Loofe.  JUSTIN WAN, Journal Star file photo

My cmnt: Only one man, out of 11, on death row in Nebraska has the decency to ask to have his just sentence carried out swiftly. Instead, because of Liberalism, we the taxpayers have to support their sorry asses to the tune of around $90,000 a year a piece – until they die, typically of natural causes. The most expensive type of prisoner to have is a death row prisoner,” said Tomasek.  According to Interrogating Justice, the average federal prisoner costs about $37,500 per year compared to a death row prisoner, which would cost about $60,000 to $70,000 per year.

My cmnt: This outrageous expense to the typical taxpayer is more than he or she makes in a year! The answer is to execute, swiftly, every person serving a life sentence – and a life sentence means a life sentence without parole. Watch the movie “Bronson” about solitary confinement vs execution.

My cmnt: If we modeled our prisons after the Japanese we would be guaranteed to lower our ridiculous recidivism rates. There is absolutely nothing cool or tough or counter-cultural to be had from time in a Japanese prison. Just boredom and monotony with mind-numbing routine, bland food and obedience. The guards carry canes and are instructed in their proper use.

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If you are going to prison in Japan, it means that you have committed a crime and are now being sentenced to imprisonment. As of March 2018, there are 62 jails, 6 juvenile jails, and 8 branch jails in Japan, and some jails hold specific types of inmates. Fuchu Prison in Tokyo prefecture and Tochigi Prison in Tochigi prefecture are where the majority of foreign inmates are held.

Prisons in Japan may be unlike prisons in your home country. They are known to be very strict, in order to rehabilitate inmates and ensure they never commit a crime again.

The image above shows an example of the daily life of an inmate in a Japanese prison. As shown, Japanese prisons follow very strict schedules down to the minute. Talking is allowed only during exercise and free time, and inmates are only allowed to speak Japanese.

Most inmates are put in community cells, which hold 6-12 inmates. The rooms are Japanese-style, which means inmates sleep on Japanese futons, and the flooring is tatami. Sometimes foreign inmates are placed separately in Western-style rooms with beds, or Japanese-style solitary cells.

Prison work includes woodworking, printing, cooking, and cleaning, as well as vocational training aimed at obtaining qualifications that can be used after being discharged from prison. Inmates are paid for this work, and this money can be collected after being discharged. During free time, inmates are allowed to watch TV, listen to the radio, read books, have quiet conversations, etc. However, these must all be done in Japanese.

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Aubrey Trail has filed a petition seeking to force the state’s hand to carry out his death sentence for the murder and dismemberment of Sydney Loofe in what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind filing in the state.

In the petition filed this week, he is asking a Lancaster County District Court judge to order Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Rob Jeffreys, the director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, to fulfill their official duties.

In the one-page document, Trail, 56, said he does not wish to conduct any further litigation staying the execution of his sentence in state or federal court.

When asked if he’s ever heard of such a thing, his court-appointed attorney, Tim Noerrlinger, said: “No. This is bizarre.”

Earlier this year, he was appointed to represent Trail, but his work is limited to a post-conviction review. When Trail told him what he planned to file on his own, Noerrlinger said he searched case law and only could find one other case like it out of Idaho.

“Mr. Trail has been adamant to me, he’s not interested in languishing on death row for years. He would like the state to carry out his sentence so the Loofe family can move on,” he said.

In 2021, Trail was sentenced to death for Loofe’s murder.

The Lincoln store clerk’s disappearance the night of Nov. 15, 2017, led to a multistate manhunt for Trail and his girlfriend, Bailey Boswell, who in Facebook videos claimed to know nothing about it. Their cellphone records, though, led police, deputies and the FBI to fields and ditches in Clay County, where they made the grisly discovery of Loofe’s remains left scattered in trash bags.

At trial in June 2019, jurors found Trail guilty. Boswell got a life sentence for her part in the crime.

In November, just shy of the five-year anniversary of the 23-year-old Lincoln woman’s disappearance, the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and death sentence.

Trail’s appeal was automatic because he was sent to death row. Though, he said he didn’t want one.

In September, while the appeal still was pending, Trail sent a motion to the Supreme Court from the Tecumseh prison asking them to set an execution date. He said they refused to let him file it because he’s represented by counsel.

In a letter to the Journal Star last month, he said: “My message to whoever is listening is simple: ‘You gave me the death penalty so now use it.’”

Trail said in Nebraska a person has a right to a speedy trial, so shouldn’t they also have a right to a speedy execution if they do not choose to appeal. But the truth is that in 99% of the cases of death sentences in Nebraska it is nothing but a life sentence with a different name, Trail said.

“I have repeatedly admitted that I murdered Sydney Loofe and I accept my sentence as fair and just so I have chosen not to file any appeals, but the truth is that means nothing,” he said.

Trail said he didn’t apologize to Loofe’s family in the courtroom at sentencing because saying “I’m sorry” is just words.

“My apology to the Loofe family is my not appealing and letting my sentence be carried out with the hope that it will give them some type of closure,” he said.

Nebraska is among 27 states where the death penalty still is on the books, though five currently have a hold on executions.

In 2015, the Nebraska Legislature voted to abolish the death penalty, a decision reversed a year later by voters through the state’s referendum process.

The state’s first execution in more than two decades followed soon after in 2018, with Carey Dean Moore’s killing at the state’s hands.

But the lethal injection drugs are long expired.

My cmnt: I really don’t get the issue here. How do lethal injection drugs expire? What, do they become more lethal? Could they kill you if administered after the expiration date? They’re not meds after all.

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Across the country, death penalty states have struggled to get enough drugs to carry out executions. In 2011, large manufacturers began blocking their drugs from being used in lethal injections, and several states have since switched to using a controversial drug, midazolam, which has been involved in botched executions in Oklahoma and Arizona.

When Texas struggled to find execution drugs years ago, it turned to compounding pharmacies, which are state-regulated agencies that mix their own drugs without federal regulation. Since 2013, it has only used pentobarbital created in these types of pharmacies in its executions.

But that supply might be running dry as well. Recent records obtained by the Tribune showed the state hadn’t received a new batch of drugs since February 2017, and the state recently battled with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over its attempted import of another execution drug, sodium thiopental, from India.

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In July, the Journal Star confirmed the Department of Correctional Services was not in possession of any lethal-injection chemicals.

Asked if steps were being taken to try to obtain them, Jeffreys said in an emailed statement: “My role and the role of NDCS is to carry out the order of the court.”

The inmates on Nebraska’s death row and their crimes

My cmnt: So we have 11 men on death row and only one of them has the decency to demand that his just sentence be carried out swiftly – and for the noble reason: the family of his murder victim can have some closure.

My cmnt: Liberal-Left ideas of crime and punishment are insane and designed to destabilize America like everything else they do and suggest. Of the men below I wonder how many are illegal aliens or sons of illegal aliens. Each one them would therefore be a crime that never would have happened without the democrats letting illegals cross our borders with impunity and/or refusing to enforce our immigration laws.

My cmnt: And another thing the Left has done is to demonize drug companies that make the lethal injection drugs. This guarantees the supply will dry up and execution will be made impossible. There is such as easy answer to this: it’s called rope. The Libs didn’t have any trouble executing Jeffrey Epstein by faking his suicide by hanging nor executing Seth Rich with a handgun. When the Left wants to get rid of you they just line you up before a firing squad vis-à-vis that great hero of the Left Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Raymond Mata Jr.

Jose Sandoval

Jorge Galindo

Erick F. Vela

Jeffrey Hessler

John L. Lotter

Roy L. Ellis

Marco E. Torres Jr.

Anthony Garcia

Nikko Jenkins

Aubrey Trail