March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Nebraska sets Mainer’s execution

LINCOLN, Neb. — Confessed child-killer John Joubert of Portland, Maine, should die in the electric chair June 28, the Nebraska Supreme Court said Thursday.

Joubert’s attorneys could file a variety of court actions to delay his execution. But Attorney General Don Stenberg said, “There is a good likelihood that the sentence will be carried out as scheduled on June 28.”

The Supreme Court acted just five days after Stenberg filed a motion seeking an execution date for Joubert. The court issued its order without comment.

Joubert, 32, was sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of 13-year-old Danny Joe Eberle and 12-year-old Christopher Walden, both of Sarpy County.

A three-judge panel in Sarpy County sentenced Joubert in October 1984. The state Supreme Court scheduled execution dates for him in 1988, 1990 and 1991. All were delayed by continuing appeals.

The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to review his case further in April.

Stenberg said he will ask Gov. Ben Nelson to scheduled a Board of Pardons meeting for June 28 in case Joubert requests a clemency hearing. The three-member board, which includes Stenberg, could commute the sentence to a life term. Scheduling a Pardons Board meeting is important, Stenberg said, because a death-row inmate receives an automatic stay of execution after requesting a hearing until the board decides whether to grant one.

“I don’t want his attorneys to manipulate the system to gain additional delays,” Stenberg said.

A former airman once stationed at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Joubert also was convicted of murdering a boy in 1982 in his home state of Maine. Maine, which has no death penalty, tried Joubert for the killing of Richard Stetson, 11, after his Nebraska convictions, but agreed to return him to Nebraska to face the death sentence.

Stenberg has said that Joubert could file a fourth action in the state courts known as a “post-conviction relief” proceeding. No defendant has ever used four such proceedings, said Stenberg, who hoped the courts would reject the move.

In asking the Supreme Court to set an execution date for Joubert, Stenberg had hoped the case would clarify whether previous rulings meant no executions will be scheduled while post-conviction relief actions are pending in lower courts.

“I am pleased that the Nebraska Supreme Court acted promptly on my motion to set a date and it has been set in the reasonably near future,” Stenberg said.


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