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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 26, 2000)
Felony murder bill voted down By Mkhelle Starr Staff writer A bill proposed to rewrite Nebraska law to provide a lesser maximum sentence for felony murder was voted down Monday. The Legislature failed to advance LB509, originally pro posed last year by Sen. ^rnie Chambers and Sen. Kermit Brashear, both of Omaha. “It’s over,” Brashear said. The bill would have allowed a lesser sentence of life in jail with out the possibility of parole for a felony murder charge. Felony murder is classified as killing someone dining the event of another felony, such as first degree sexual assault, robbery, arson, kidnapping, burglary or hijacking. Nebraska law does not require prosecutors to prove intent to kill, and felony murder is punishable by death. “We failed to increase the scope of the law and improve the criminal code,” Brashear said. An amendment proposed by Brashear this year added three crimes to the list of felony murder offenses: first-degree false impris onment, sexual assault on a child and child abuse. It would have also made the possibility of parole unavailable for felony murder. “I would have supported the bill with the amendment, but not without it,” Sen. Dwite Pedersen, of Elkhom, said. A charge of felony murder is unlike first-degree murder because once a person is charged with felony murder, jurors can only choose to convict or acquit. In first-degree murder charges, jurors are allowed the option to convict on a lesser charge. The amendment would not have applied to people already con victed of felony murder. Brashear said no plans for a future bill dealing with felony mur der have been made. — LEGISLATURE Johanns pushes bills that focus on youth By Veronica Daehn Staff writer Gov. Mike Johanns urged the Education Committee on Tuesday to advance two bills .that would support Nebraska’s youth. LB 1160 would provide money for state mentoring programs, and LB 1162 would render grants for a statewide school-to-career program. Johanns said both bills would give students a reason to stay in school and embark on a lifetime of learning. “In order to educate, we need to ensure school experiences are rele vant and rewarding,” Johanns said. That’s why giving money to men toring programs and school-to-career programs is so important, he said. If it passes, LB 1160 would make available $500,000 from the state’s general fund to support mentoring programs. In order to receive money, though, the program applying for the grant would have to match the amount provided by the state. Johanns said this would push partnerships between local organiza tions and state government. “We know mentoring works,” he said. “This money could be the cata lyst to encourage local participation.” Local investors would also need to match the state’s contribution in LB 1162. Johanns said $ 1 million would be available in state general funds to support school-to-career programs. School-to-career programs allow high school students to go into the workplace during a portion of the school day to gain experience. Sen. Mark Quandahl of Omaha said he introduced the bill because federal funding for school-to-career programs ends this year. “Over 10,000 businesses and 800 schools participate in Nebraska (in school-to-career programs) now,” Quandahl said. “This bill would ensure the continued growth of those programs.” LB 1162 would help the state, as well as the students, Quandahl said. “We need to ensure that students have some capacity to understand the requirements of certain careers,” he said. “This adds an integral first step to the state’s workplace shortage.” ^ In order to educate, we need to ensure school experiences are . relevant and rewarding.” Gov. Mike Johanns Both bills would place grants under the control of the Department of Economic Development instead of the Department of Education. Several senators said this was a bad idea. “If this program is just to deal with kids, I have trouble putting it into the Department of Economic Development,” said Sen. Bob Wickersham of Harrison. “Do they know anything about kids? That is quite troubling, actually.” Sen. Jon Bruning of Omaha intro duced the bill and said the main issue is not which department gets control of the money. “The Department of Economic Development already knows how to administer grants,” Bruning said. “The big issue is how do we get money to help kids?” The governor agreed. Johanns said both bills would have a positive impact on Nebraska’s economic future, as well as on its youth. ' Former University of Nebraska Football Coach Topi Osborne said his mentoring program, TeamMates, has 1,400 mentor match-ups across Nebraska. He said he would like to see that increase to 5,000 within the next three years. The program costs about $500 a year per student, Osborne said, total ing around $20,000. So far, all money is private. “Does government belong in this?” Osborne said. “I don’t know. That’s your decision. But we will continue to work whether we have government funding or not.” Both bills were held in committee Tuesday and will be discussed within the next two weeks. Study focuses on teen smoking By John Hejkal StaffurHer Groups ofhigh-school students get ting their nicotine fixes after the bell rings for the day may become a less common sight if Kristine MeVea has anything to do with it MeVea, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, is conduct ing a study designed to understand why high-school students have such a hard time quitting smoking. Grants were received from the American Cancer Society, the state of Nebraska and the Nebraska chapter of the American Lung Association for MeVea’s study. The American Cancer Society provided the largest amount of money, giving $135,000. “Teen smoking is a huge issue in our nation right now,” she said, pointing out that about one-fourth ofhigh-school students smoke on a regular basis. She said about 75 percent ofhigh school smokers have tried to quit, but their success rate is lower than that of adults. The first year of the three-year study involves interviewing teen smok ers to find out why they want to quit and how they go about trying. That informa tion will be used to figure out how orga nizations can support those students, McVea said In the second and third years of the study, McVea will be trying out forms of intervention to help teens kick the habit Rob McEntarffer, a psychology and philosophy teacher at Lincoln Southeast High School, is a co researcher with McVea and John Creswell, an educational psychology professor at UNL. There are a lot of programs to pre vent teen smoking, McEntarffer said, but few help students change their behaviors. Finding out what it is like for a teen ager to quit smoking is important, he said, because teen smoking rates have stayed about the same over the years. “Whatever we’re doing now isn’t working that well,” McEntarffer said. The researchers are surveying high school students from Lincoln Southeast, Lincoln East and Lincoln High, McEntarffer said. A portion of the smokers will be interviewed every two weeks for three months. The others will be interviewed once per month for a year. A pilot program has already begun to help teens quit smoking, McVea said. The researchers are working to train teens in giving smoking cessation advice, she said “One of the things that makes it hard for teens to stop smoking is that they’re offered cigarettes from their friends,” she said. Me Vea said she hopes getting peers involved will help teens overcome problems they encounter as they try to quit. “We noticed teens don’t have the skills to provide effective smoking ces sation messages, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we train them?”’ she said The research that Me Vea has done so far has yielded information about the psychological state of teen smokers. “A lot of die students that we’re talk ing to who are smokers are really stressed out,” she said. She said many students may be struggling with depression or attention deficit disorder, and they self-medicate with cigarettes. She said helping students learn other ways to cope, like relaxation tech niques, may be a instrumental in help ing them quit smoking. “I think it’s kind of sad that these kids want to do something for them selves, but no one’s really helping them,” she said. BUYREgrCtEO. AND save: When you buy products made from recy cled materials, recycling keeps »orking. lb find out more, call l-SM-CALL-EDF. I ! $7.50 I Call Leanne at 464-7358 Hairport Salon 4711 Hunington shampoo: $3 extra ■ •xp. Jan.30 i Navix• is now ALLTEL Internet Service. (Now you won’t have to share your e-mail) New name— same service. Plus a whole lot more. Now, with ALLTEL internet, you’ll receive up to 5 personal mail boxes with your account so everyone can have their own e-mail address. And, ALLTEL Internet gives you up to 5MB of FREE personal web space. So you can create your own web page. 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