“As of right now, we are planning on introducing a bill in the 2020 session,” Taylor said.

While it is unclear which lawmakers would join Olsen as co-sponsors of repeal legislation, Taylor said the group has been actively engaging the public in forums across the state in hopes that Wyomingites on the fence about death penalty repeal could come to a point where they support it.

According to the bill’s proponents, the repeal effort has been boosted for a number of reasons, including the overreach of government into deciding who should live or die, the potential for innocent people to be convicted (there have been 156 death row inmates exonerated across the country since 1973), and the high cost to taxpayers for keeping death penalty on the books. Despite Wyoming’s sparing use of the death penalty in the past several decades, taxpayers are still on the hook for $1 million annually to keep it on the books.

For these reasons, lawmakers like Olsen believe that death penalty repeal transcends partisanship.