Death Penalty Among Bills to Be Heard at Statehouse Hearing

A bill that would reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts is among dozens of pending pieces of legislation scheduled to be heard by the Legislature's Judiciary Committee at a public hearing.

The hearing is scheduled for Wednesday.

Support for capital punishment has waned at the Statehouse in recent years.

The closest the Legislature has come to restoring the death penalty since its abolition was in 1997, was when a bill was defeated by a single vote in the House shortly after the murder of a 10-year-old Cambridge boy, Jeffrey Curley.

Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received a death sentence in federal court.

Dozens of other bills - including those related to inmate organ donations, searches of female inmates, and criteria for the release of terminally ill inmates - will also be heard.