Critics of Wyoming's death penalty will gather outside the Wyoming Supreme Court at noon on Tuesday to officially launch a campaign to end capital punishment in the state.

Sabrina King with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming -- one of the organizations backing the Wyoming Campaign to End the Death Penalty in 2020 -- says repealing the death penalty will help eliminate racial and jurisdictional bias, reduce unnecessary waste of tax dollars and eliminate the risk of executing innocent people.

“Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system,” said King.

“We know innocent people are sent to death row, we know the toll on victims’ families from the death penalty is immense, and we know having it in law does not serve as a deterrent to violent crime," she added.

The Wyoming Legislature in February voted down a bill that would have repealed the death penalty in the state.  Had it passed, the bill would have replaced all sentences of death with a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Wyoming currently has no convicts facing the death penalty since a federal judge in 2014 threw out a death sentence for murderer Dale Wayne Eaton, who spent 10 years on death row.

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