Kansas Senate votes to expedite executions

The Senate gave initial approval Wednesday to a bill to speed up the appeals process for death row inmates - despite concerns it could increase the likelihood of the state executing someone who was wrongly convicted.

Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, said Kansas hasn't executed anyone in the 20 years since the reinstatement of the death penalty. He said the state currently has a lenient appeals timeline that has caused execution dates to be long delayed, even for those convicted of heinous crimes, like Wichita brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr.

"In the 20 years since the reinstatement of the death penalty, no case in Kansas has made it past even the 1st appeal," King said. "No state in the union will allow the Carr brothers to delay, delay, delay their appeals as we have done in Kansas."

Senate Substitute for House Bill 2389 moves to final Senate action Thursday. It would put hard deadlines on when the transcript and court records of a capital murder case must be prepared, as well as when the appellate briefs are due.

In order to help judicial staff members hit those deadlines, the bill would mandate that capital cases take precedent, allowing court reporters to file extensions for other cases to expedite work on death penalty cases.

It also would limit the direct appeals process to 3 1/2 years, though King noted that capital murder defendants still would be able to access 2 other levels of appeals.

"We're talking about on average of 11 years of time for these appeals to occur even if (HB) 2389 becomes law," King said. "We're not talking about a 3-year appellate process."

Still, opponents of the bill worried that any acceleration of appeals could speed an innocent person to their death at the hands of the state.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said he personally knew a man who served 3 years in Kansas for rape before new evidence exonerated him.

The appellate bill emerged this session at the same time as a study showing what capital punishment is costing the state judiciary, largely because of lengthy appeals. The bill could undercut the cost argument for a separate bill to repeal the death penalty that had a committee hearing early in the session but hasn't advanced.

Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, unsuccessfully tried an amendment to mandate a $5 million payment to the estate of anyone the state executed who was later exonerated.

Haley called the law allowing capital punishment a "barbaric, chest-bump of a statute" and asked his colleagues what price they would put on the life of an innocent person who is executed.

"In our justice system sometimes the wrong person is convicted," Haley said. "I don't think that's an epiphany here."

King said there are already remedies within state law, including a wrongful death lawsuit.

Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, another death penalty opponent, said some capital murder defendants are represented by public defenders who work large caseloads for relatively little pay, and she worried about putting deadlines on them combing through hundreds of pages that are "like a scientific document, not a novel."

"So now we're going to hurry things up, and mistakes can be made," McGinn said. "We're not talking about folks already on death row. We're talking from this day forward we're going to speed this process up. I hope it doesn't happen, but some day we could be like other states and end up executing an innocent person."

Source: Capital Journal Online, Feb. 12, 2014

'In Cold Blood' DNA testing inconclusive, so far

Hickock and Smith

DNA testing so far has been inconclusive on whether 2 men executed in Kansas for the 1959 killings that inspired the book "In Cold Blood" can also be linked to the unsolved slayings of a Florida family weeks later, a senior investigator said Wednesday.

Kansas Bureau of Investigation will continue testing material collected from the remains of convicted murderers Richard Hickock and Perry Smith, Deputy Director Kyle Smith said. Investigators believe the men fled to Florida after killing the Clutter family in a gruesome case later documented by Truman Capote in his genre-forming classic.

"The analysis is not completed," Kyle Smith told The Associated Press. "We are still trying."

In Florida, the Sarasota County sheriff's office says it remains optimistic that it can resolve questions about the killings of 4 family members, just days before Christmas 1959. A detective there began investigating the case again in 2007.

"Hopefully, science will be able to give us the answers," spokeswoman Wendy Rose said.

The KBI initially projected it would have definitive results from the DNA early this month, but the agency now has no timetable for when the testing will be complete.

"Justice never rests," Smith said.

Hickock and Perry Smith were hanged in 1965 in Kansas for the killings of Herb Clutter, his wife and 2 of their children in the family's farmhouse outside the southwest Kansas town of Holcomb.

The hunt for the killers mesmerized the nation and drew journalists from across the U.S. to the small farming town. Capote's book takes readers through the killings, Hickock's and Perry Smith's trial and their execution. It is celebrated because it reads like a novel; scholars have long debated its accuracy.

Attention quickly turned to Hickock and Perry Smith when, only weeks after the Kansas slayings, a Florida family was killed. Cliff Walker and his wife, Christine, along with their 2 small children, were killed in their home in Osprey, Fla., south of Sarasota. The case was never solved.

Investigators believed Hickock and Smith fled to Florida after killing the Clutter family, then traveled to Las Vegas, where they were captured. A lie detector test cleared them of the Walker slayings - but in 1987, a polygraph expert declared that such tests were worthless in the 1960s. Christine Walker also had been raped, so Florida authorities sought to compare a DNA profile from semen on her clothing to the DNA profiles taken from the remains of Hickock and Smith.

The convicted murderers were buried in Lansing. Kansas officials had their remains exhumed in December so state investigators could collect bone fragments for DNA samples.

Kyle Smith said the KBI will eventually turn over results of the DNA tests to Florida officials who will announce any links between the cases.

"In Cold Blood" alludes to the Walker killings in a short passage; Capote incorrectly states that the slayings occurred near Tallahassee, Fla., about five hours north of the actual scene. He also relates a conversation between Hickock and Smith on a beach in Miami, and has Smith speculating that "a lunatic" copied the Kansas killings. The book says that in reply, Hickock "shrugged and grinned and trotted down to the ocean's edge."

Authorities in Florida have said Hickock and Smith were spotted at least a dozen times from Tallahassee to Miami. On the day of the Walker slayings, authorities have said, Hickock and Smith bought items at a Sarasota department store.

The Sarasota County Sheriff's detective who began re-investigating the Walker deaths in 2007 said the Walkers had been considering buying a 1956 Chevy Bel Air, the kind of car Hickock and Smith were driving through Florida.

Source: Associated Press, May 29, 2013

Kansas has a death penalty, but it isn’t being used

No one has been put to death in Kansas since 1965.

“Kansas is 10 years and $20 million away from its first execution,” predicted lawyer and capital punishment opponent Sean O’Brien of Kansas City.

Kansas lawmakers reinstated the state’s death penalty in 1994. Since then, 13 men have been condemned to death for murder. All remain alive. Only nine sit on the state’s death row, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections’ website. The others’ sentences were reduced after appeals and plea agreements, or have been vacated pending a new trial.

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court validated rewritten capital punishment laws, only two states with death penalty statutes — Kansas and New Hampshire — have not executed a single inmate.

The long gap between capital crime and capital punishment in Kansas is the result of several interlocking factors, experts say.

The state’s death penalty law is narrow, providing a way for even the most brutal killers to escape the punishment. Some prosecutors use the death penalty more as a negotiating tool than a criminal sanction, and some politicians remain ambivalent about executions, as do many residents in the state.

And the courts play a critical role.

All death sentences in Kansas are automatically reviewed by the state’s Supreme Court. It’s uniquely allowed to “scour the record” for trial and sentencing errors in capital cases, even those not raised by defense lawyers. That further raises the chances for delays.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Kansas City Star, May 17, 2013

Death Penalty Information Center: States Ranked by Executions Per Death Sentence

DPIC has updated its Executions Per Death Death Sentence page to reflect data through 2010.  This page lists states in order of the percentage of death sentences resulting in an execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.  If every death sentence resulted in an execution, the state would be at 100%, or a rate of 1.00.  Using this ratio of executions per death sentence, the first five states are Virginia (.725), Texas (.498), Utah (.368), Missouri (.347), and Delaware (.311).  Of those states that have carried out at least one execution, the five states with the lowest rate of execution are Pennsylvania (.008), California (.015), Idaho (.025), Oregon (.028), and Tennessee (.035).  Four states with the death penalty during this time period had no executions: Kansas, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York.  The latter two have abandoned the death penalty.  Nationally, about 15% of death sentences have resulted in an execution (a rate of .150).  Another measure of state execution rates is executions per capita (population).  Under this standard, Oklahoma and Texas are the leading states.

Source: DPIC, September 6, 2011

Kansas: State's execution process ready, waiting

Death will come at 11 a.m. on their execution date for all Kansas prison inmates condemned for capital murder.

The warden, chaplain and correctional officers serving on an execution strapdown team will enter the condemned inmate's holding cell on the 4th floor of an administration building at Lansing Correctional Facility.

The warden will read the order of execution.

The prisoner will be escorted to the lethal injection chamber on that same floor, strapped onto a gurney and allowed to make a final statement, which the warden will write down to be released later to the media.

Prison officials will confirm there is no reason to stop the execution, then open curtains to the injection chamber so witnesses can watch.

Those steps are part of the 57-page protocol for carrying out executions that the Kansas Department of Corrections has had in place since 2001.

8 Kansas inmates, all men, face death sentences.

That number would rise by one if an Osage County judge on Oct. 11 follows the guidance a jury provided this past week.

Jurors recommended James Kraig Kahler, 48, be executed for capital murder in the November 2009 gunshot slayings of his estranged wife, their 2 teenaged daughters and his wife's grandmother.

None of those facing death sentences in Kansas figures to go to the execution gurney any time soon.

This state, where the last execution took place by hanging in 1965, hasn't put anyone to death since its law allowing for capital punishment by lethal injection took effect in 1994.

All inmates currently facing death sentences are pursuing appeals they have yet to exhaust, and none has ever seen an execution date set.

The condemned include Gary Kleypas, who in 1998 became the 1st person sentenced to death under the current law after he was convicted of the 1996 murder of a Pittsburg State University student.

The Kansas Supreme Court vacated Kleypas' sentence for legal reasons in 2001 before he was again sentenced to death in the same case in 2008.

The inmates with the longest-standing current death sentences are brothers Jonathan and Reginald Carr, condemned in 2002 for capital murder committed 2 years earlier in the deaths of 3 young men and a young woman in Wichita. The Carrs also were sentenced to life imprisonment for a separate, unrelated murder.

Kansas legislators supporting capital punishment have been quick to cite the Carrs' crimes when that topic comes up for debate.

The Kansas Senate in a 20-20 vote in February 2010 rejected a bill that would have abolished the death penalty for murders committed after July 1 of that year while leaving it in place for cases where a death sentence had already been imposed.

A bill that would have made those same moves was introduced this year in the Kansas House but never received a hearing in its Federal and State Affairs Committee.

Meanwhile, Lansing Correctional Facility warden David McCune says the corrections department — rather than maintaining a specific "death row" — chooses to keep its capital inmates in administrative segregation at El Dorado Correctional Facility.

McCune said no specific death row was established because the feeling was that the administrative segregation unit at El Dorado was an appropriate security level for inmates being held on a death sentence.

Corrections department spokesman Jan Lunsford said those in administrative segregation, including inmates who aren't facing death sentences, are locked alone in their cells for all but one hour five times a week, when they are allowed to come out and exercise by themselves in a secure pen.

Lunsford said inmates in administrative segregation also are allowed out of the cells in restraints when they are taken to shower alone.

Lunsford said seven of the state's capital inmates are at El Dorado while one — Scott Cheever, convicted in the 2005 slaying of Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels — is at Lansing. Cheever is at Lansing because victims of his crime are employed at the El Dorado facility, McCune said.

The decision to house capital inmates at one prison and execute them at another was made to benefit staff members who take care of those prisoners on a long-term basis, then-Kansas Corrections Secretary Chuck Simmons told The Topeka Capital-Journal in 2001.

"An execution is something that has a certain amount of impact on all of the staff who participate," Simmons said.

Death Chamber
Lansing Correctional Facility

He spoke at a 2001 media event where the state showed reporters the lethal injection chamber it had completed the previous year on the top floor of a 4-story administration building at Lansing Correctional Facility. The building previously had been declared structurally unsound and stood vacant for 20 years before the state renovated it.

Corrections officials at the event also displayed an 8-foot-by-10-foot holding cell on the building's top floor where condemned inmates are to spend their final days.

They said each condemned prisoner would be allowed a last meal of either the regular fare served that day to the other inmates at Lansing or something costing no more than $15 from a Lansing restaurant.

Corrections officials said the execution would be witnessed by people in 3 rooms, including one containing as many as 3 people invited by the inmate, who would be able to see them through the glass.

They said the inmate wouldn't be able to see those in the other rooms, which would contain family members of the victims and representatives of the news media and the government.

The execution protocol adopted 10 years ago remains in place, Lunsford said.

He provided The Capital-Journal a copy of that protocol. For security reasons, redactions had been made to all or part of 35 of the document's 57 pages.

The protocol calls for a team of Lansing Correctional Facility officials to travel 1 week before the execution date to the prison where the condemned inmate is being kept.

The inmate then will be transferred to the building housing the lethal injection chamber at Lansing.

Lunsford said the building's fourth floor has gone unused over the past 10 years, through its lower 3 floors have been used on a daily basis for administrative functions.

On the day of the execution, the protocol calls for an injection team and a strapdown team of corrections department employees to help carry out the sentence. Lunsford said the state has yet to determine which employees will serve on those.

The protocol calls for the injection team to prepare all injection drugs on the morning the sentence is to be carried out.

At execution time, protocol calls for 1 intravenous tube each to be placed in the right and left arms of the condemned inmate.

The inmate will then be injected with sodium pentothal, to make him unconscious; pancuronium bromide, to halt breathing; and potassium chloride, to stop the heart.

The sole American manufacturer of sodium pentothol, also known as sodium thiopenal, announced in January it would no longer produce the drug.

The move was expected to force some states to adopt new drug combinations for lethal injection and to delay further executions, some of which had already been moved back because of the drug's limited supply.

McCune said Friday that the state of Kansas has yet to obtain the chemicals it will need to carry out executions by lethal injection

“We do not stock any of these drugs as they have expiration shelf lives,” he said.

Source: Capital-Journal, September 4, 2011

Delaware: Resources devoted to death penalty could be better spent

Unless something unexpected happens, on Friday shortly after midnight, the people of Delaware will kill. That is the blunt, impolitic way to say that the state of Delaware, after a 6-year hiatus, will resume the practice of execution. As citizens, we must all take responsibility for the state's actions. Resuming executions in Delaware is completely contrary to trends across the country. Four months ago, on a bipartisan vote, Illinois repealed its death penalty, commuted the sentences of 15 death row prisoners to life without parole, and decided to use the taxpayer dollars saved to train police officers and provide services for murder victims' families.

Illinois followed New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico, and became the 4th state to repeal the death penalty since 2005, the last time Delaware executed. There are now 16 states without capital punishment -- the highest number rejecting the death penalty in more than 30 years. All indications are that this trend will continue. There are a growing number of states across the country questioning the use of the death penalty and looking at reforms. In 2011, 19 state legislatures considered repeal or significant restrictions to the use of the death penalty. Serious efforts in Montana, Maryland, Kansas, Connecticut and Nebraska will certainly result in one, two or all of these states abolishing the death penalty in the next few years.

The trend away from capital punishment is also reflected in national statistics: Executions in America dropped by more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2010, and the number of new death sentences imposed in 2010 was the lowest in 34 years.

Many states are turning against the death penalty due to its high cost. In a tight budget climate, it's tough to choose to spend millions of dollars on a chronically flawed death penalty system while taking funds away from such things as the police, schools, environmental protection and services for the victims of crime.

Many also question the fundamental validity of the punishment. For example, the American Law Institute, the leading organization in the country dedicated to improving the law, created the modern legal framework for the death penalty in 1962. In 2009, they removed capital punishment from their Model Penal Code, saying that it can never be administered fairly because the system is arbitrary, fraught with racial and economic disparities, and unable to assure quality legal representation for indigent defendants.

The Illinois repeal is an indication of another growing national trend -- a movement toward alternatives to the death penalty and an increased focus on murder victims' families and the prevention of crime.

Given our national economic climate, the general public also recognizes that resources used for the death penalty should be diverted to higher budgetary priorities. A 2010 poll conducted by Lake Research Partners showed that 61 % of U.S. voters chose various alternative sentences over the death penalty as the punishment for murder.

The same poll listed the death penalty last in a list of priorities for state spending after job creation, emergency services, schools and libraries, public health care, police and crime prevention, and roads and transportation.

As in other parts of the country, violent crime in Delaware has been steadily declining since the mid-1990s. Between 2008 and 2009 (the most current FBI statistics available), the murder rate here dropped over 28 %. Yet, Delaware has the largest death row in the country based on our population, the third highest execution rate based on our murder rate, and laws that allow the state to pursue the death penalty more easily and frequently than almost any other state in the country with capital punishment.

Do these circumstances truly reflect who we are as Delawareans and how we want our state to respond to violent crime?

We think it's time for all Delawareans to take a closer look at the death penalty and engage in a dialogue about its use. Is this how the state should be spending our hard-earned tax dollars? Does the death penalty keep us safer? Is it applied fairly? Does it serve the needs of families who have lost a loved one to murder?

Illinois aimed a spotlight on the death penalty in 2000 when it became the first state to enact a moratorium against its use. States have been debating the pros and cons ever since.

Isn't it time we joined the conversation?

Source: Opinion, Rosemary Haines and Tom Eleuterio are co-presidents of Delaware Citizens Opposed to the Death Penalty. Kathleen MacRae is executive director of ACLU of Delaware, and Janet Leban is executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice----The News Journal, July 26, 2011

Kansas House Introduces Bill to Abolish the Death Penalty

The bill's being sponsored by the House's Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee.

The Kansas House of Representatives introduced HB 2323, a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty. The House Corrections and Juvenile Justice Committee sponsored the bill.

HB 2323 will replace the Kansas death penalty with life in prison without parole as the sentence for the crime of aggravated murder.

“This legislation will enable Kansas law enforcement officials to use the existing sentence of life without parole to hold offenders accountable for their crimes and protect the public safety without the unacceptable risk of executing an innocent person,” said Donna Schneweis, the Board Chair of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty.

In Kansas capital cases to date, there have been well documented errors, including judicial error, jury misconduct, prosecutorial misconduct, withheld evidence, jury instruction issues and ineffective assistance of counsel. The Kansas Supreme Court has vacated three death sentences due to such errors.

“The death penalty is rife with problems beyond those in the court room,” said Carolyn Zimmerman, of Topeka, whose father was murdered in January 1969.

“The death penalty continues to impact the victims’ families long after a crime has occurred. A capital trial only prolongs a family’s pain and trauma, and rarely brings the closure families long for,” said Zimmerman.

Last year, the Kansas Senate nearly voted to abolish the death penalty. The legislation failed on a 20-20 vote.

"States across the country are recognizing the flaws of the death penalty. This legislation is the next step to ending this broken, inconsistent policy in Kansas,” said Schneweis.

Source: WIBW News, February 13, 2011

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'The state of Alabama may be short of the resources it needs to educate children, but it somehow has a scarce chemical on hand to carry out an execution on Thursday'

Alabama is a notoriously cheap state, as governments go. We skimp on everything from state troopers to schools, denying them the resources to deliver much beyond the basics and sometimes not even getting that far. But when it comes to capital punishment, Alabama is the land of the plenty.

Just this week, as the state prepared to put Phillip Hallford to death today, prison officials announced they had enough sodium thiopental to proceed with the execution even though a shortage of the anesthetic has snagged lethal injections across the country. In some states, executions have been delayed; last week, Arizona had to go overseas to find the drug so it could carry out a death sentence.

And the supply of sodium thiopental is but one example of Alabama's abounding investment in this form of punishment.

Alabama has consistently been one of the nation's leaders in issuing death sentences and carrying them out, and that is no cheap enterprise. While it may seem counterintuitive, studies across the country have shown that putting killers to death is a far more expensive proposition than locking them up for life.

A Duke University economist estimated that North Carolina would save $11 million a year by dropping the death penalty. A Florida newspaper found the Sunshine State could save $51 million a year by sentencing killers to life without parole rather than death. Ultimately, New Jersey scrapped its death penalty after a report found that capital cases over the course of two decades had cost taxpayers $253 million above and beyond what the state would have paid to send the killers to prison for the rest of their lives.

Much of the extra cost stems from the extra legal attention required before the government can take a life as punishment for a crime. A review in Kansas -- which found median costs for capital cases to be $1.26 million compared to $740,000 for comparable nondeath cases -- concluded almost half the extra costs came from the original trial while appeals accounted for close to 30 percent of the added expense.

It's hard to know exactly how Alabama's costs stack up against these other states, because we skimp on prisons and indigent defense, too. But judging by the findings elsewhere, there is hardly any question capital cases are costing the state money it otherwise would not have to spend.

That's not why The News opposes the death penalty. We believe it is carried out in a way that is far too unfair and careless, and we believe that can't be tolerated if you subscribe to the notion (as we do) that life has value. And because life without parole is the legal alternative, we don't believe killing the killer is necessary to protect society.

We understand victims' loved ones may reach different conclusions. The family of Eddie Shannon, for instance, may understandably see today's scheduled execution of Hallford as a just and necessary punishment. Shannon was the boyfriend of Hallford's pregnant daughter. Hallford shot him to death in 1987. Shannon was just 16.

That's a senseless crime. We certainly are in no position to try to tell Shannon's family what it should feel about Hallford or his execution. But from the perspective of larger society, and as public policy, the punishment doesn't make sense -- not really from the standpoint of justice nor from the perspective of dollars and cents.

Alabama may perennially cut corners on vital services such as educating our children. But there always seems to be enough room in the budget to keep the state's death chamber stocked and ready for use. What a sad commentary on our priorities.

Source: Birmingham News editorial board, al.com, November 4, 2010

Virginia: Death row visits

Mississippi DR
Non contact visit area

THE VIRGINIA Department of Corrections has had a welcome change of heart on its death row visitation policy.

For the past three years, those sentenced to death have been allowed face-to-face visits with relatives, although they have not been allowed physical contact. The department said this month that it planned to toughen this already restrictive policy. Come Sept. 1, the dozen or so death row inmates in Virginia would have had to rely on video cameras to pipe in the sights and sounds of loved ones. No more eye contact, no more pressing hands against glass.

Virginia was poised to join Kansas as the only two of the 35 states in the nation that execute prisoners to prohibit in-person family visits, according to the Associated Press. The commonwealth said that efficiency and security drove the decision. For example, security personnel would no longer have to be taken off other duties to escort inmates and family members to visiting rooms.

But on Friday the department engaged in an about-face. "There will be no change in the death row visitation policy at the present time," spokesman Larry Traylor said in a statement. "We will continue to review and research current policy as well as other related issues and technical capabilities."

Pushing the pause button is welcome, but the state should permanently abandon any thought of eliminating in-person visits. We oppose the death penalty, but, if it is to be carried out, those sentenced to death and their families should be treated humanely. This is not to excuse the crimes that may have landed an inmate on death row or to diminish the loss felt in the families of these inmates' victims. But taking away all contact with visitors would be cruel and apt to accomplish little in the way of enhanced security.

Source: The Washington Post, August 30, 2010

Virginia to end face-to-face visits for death row

Virginia is set to become the 2nd state to eliminate face-to-face visitation for death row inmates in favor of video visits.

State correction officials say the policy will be less intrusive on visitors, less labor-intensive on staff and could lead to expanded visitation opportunities. It will take effect Sept. 1.

Relatives of inmates on death row call the policy cruel and unnecessary.

Of the nation's 35 death penalty states, Kansas was the 1st to require that visits with inmates on death row be conducted by video conference. A dozen states allow contact visits, while 21 others require visitors to be separated by a glass partition. In Ohio, visitors are separated by glass, but there is a slot that allows visitors and death-row inmates to hold hands.

Source: Associated Press, August 21, 2010

The "Prohibitive" Cost of the Death Penalty

Keep reading if Utah’s firing squad execution last week stirred a sense of “he got what he deserved.”

Consider more details and you might be less appreciative for what state-sanctioned vigilante justice gives back to the taxpayer. And it doesn’t matter if the deed is done by a five-man firing squad like the one that killed Utah’s Ronnie Lee Gardner, or lethal injection.

If the nation’s budget crisis is a concern, that is. If news of more cuts to services like highway repairs irks you. If you are troubled by teachers being laid off because states are fiscally strapped, or police officers not being hired, or trash collectors.

The death penalty is a colossal waste of money in the 35 states that have it, including Missouri and Kansas. Adding to the insult, it is ineffective as a crime deterrent.

A state can pay $1 million more to pursue a capital case compared with pursuing any other sentence, according to a 2009 report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

But because only one death sentence is reached for every three sought, the extra expense is even more questionable.

So what does seeking the death penalty accomplish? Why, revenge, of course. The death penalty satisfies the eye-for-an-eye attitude that can’t be soothed by merely seeking the far less costly sentence of life in prison with no parole.

I oppose the death penalty because murder is wrong. It doesn’t matter if it is done by a criminal, or the state. But increasingly even people who don’t philosophically oppose it, like many in law enforcement, are chiming in too. They’re arguing that the money could be better spent elsewhere if the goal is reducing crime.

A poll last year of 500 randomly selected police chiefs found they ranked the death penalty at the bottom of ways to reduce crime. And many pointedly said they could cut crime drastically if money saved by eliminating it were freed up for police use.

Fiscal realities are even undercutting the common argument that life without parole doesn’t preclude the possibility that a lifer will kill a guard or another inmate. Some argue money saved by closing death rows could be applied toward increased guard training and numbers, thereby reducing the likelihood of prison murders.

Kansas City will be host for such discussions at 2 p.m. Saturday at the annual meeting of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty at the Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center.

Given all the information on capital punishment’s costs and ineffectiveness as a crime deterrent, revenge is the only reason people remain beholden to the death penalty.

Yet revenge is the least informed, most emotionally reactive rationale of all. And in these times of budget constraints, it’s an even shallower response than ever. -- Mary Sanchez.

Source: KansasCity.com, June 23, 2010

USA: Cost of Death Penalty Is a Killer for State Budgets

Capital murder trials and death row boondoggles are wreaking havoc on budgets across the country as many states are now rethinking the death penalty, which is enormously costly and rarely imposed even after successful prosecutions.

Every time a killer is sentenced to die, a school closes.

That is the broad assessment of a growing number of studies taking a cold, hard look at how much the death penalty costs in the 35 states that still have it.

Forget justice, morality, the possibility of killing an innocent man or any of the traditional arguments that have been part of the public debate over the death penalty. The new one is this:

The cost of killing killers is killing us.

"There have been studies of costs of the death penalty before, but we have never seen the same reaction that we are seeing now," says Richard C. Dieter of the non-partisan Death Penalty Information Center. "Perhaps it is because governments are looking for ways to cut costs, and this is easier than school closings or layoffs, but it sure has hit a nerve."

In the last year, 4 states Kansas, Colorado, Montana and Connecticut have wrestled with the emotional and politically charged issue. In each state there was a major shift toward rejection of the death penalty and narrow defeats for legislation that would have abolished it. In Connecticut, both houses actually voted in favor of a bill that would have banned executions, but the governor vetoed it.

Unlike past debates over executions, the current battles are fueled largely by the costs the death penalty imposes on states. The numbers, according to the studies, are staggering.

Overall, according to Dieter, the studies have uniformly and conservatively shown that a death-penalty trial costs $1 million more than one in which prosecutors seek life without parole. That expense is being reexamined in the current budget crisis, with some state legislators advocating a moratorium on death-penalty trials until the economy improves.

An Urban Institute study of Maryland's experience with the death penalty found that a single death-penalty trial cost $1.9 million more than a non-death-penalty trial. Since 1978, the cost to taxpayers for the five executions the state carried out was $37.2 million dollars each.

Since 1983, taxpayers in New Jersey have paid $253 million more for death penalty trials than they would have paid for trials not seeking execution but the Garden State has yet to execute a single convict. Of the 197 capital cases tried in New Jersey, there have been 60 death sentences, the report said, and 50 of the those convictions were overturned. There currently are 10 men on the state's death row.

A recent Duke University study of North Carolina's death penalty costs found that the state could save $11 million a year by substituting life in prison for the death penalty. An earlier Duke study found that the state spent $2.1 million more on a death penalty case than on one seeking a life sentence.

The Tennessee Comptroller of the Currency recently estimated that death penalty trials cost an average of 48 % more than trials in which prosecutors sought life sentences.

It was much the same story in Kansas. A state-sponsored study found that death penalty cases cost 70 % more than murder trials that didn't seek the death penalty.

A Florida study found the state could cut its costs by $51 million simply by eliminating the death penalty.

But no state matches the dilemma of California, where almost 700 inmates are sitting on death row and, according to Natasha Minsker, author of a new report by the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, few will ever actually be put to death. In fact, she says, the odds against being executed are so great, murder suspects in California actually seek the death penalty because it is the only way to get a single room in the state's prison system.

"Only 1 % of people sentenced to death in California in the last 30 years have been executed," Minsker said. "The death penalty in California is purely a symbolic sentence."

Her study found that the cash-strapped state could immediately save $1 billion by eliminating the death penalty and imposing sentences of life without parole. The alternative, if the cash-strapped state keeps the death penalty: spend $400 million to build a new death-row prison to house the growing number of prisoners.

Minsker said just keeping prisoners on death row costs $90,000 more per prisoner per year than regular confinement, because the inmates are housed in single rooms and the prisons are staffed with extra guards. That money alone would cut $63 million from the state budget. But other savings would ripple through every step of the criminal justice system as well, from court costs to subsidized spending for defense attorney and investigation expenses.

Will the economic slump and every state's need to cut budgets have an impact? Death penalty opponents say the recession has given their effort a new, non-political reason for abolition that resonates on both sides of the debate. But Professor Paul Cassell, the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law at the University of Utah and a death penalty expert, says that major changes are not likely to occur soon.

Source: FOX News, March 27, 2010

Kansas: Appeals keep executions a long way off

Topeka — Kansas legislators recently completed an exhaustive review of the death penalty that resulted in a 20-20 vote in the Senate that left capital punishment on the books.

But an actual execution in Kansas of someone on Death Row won’t happen for years, if ever.

“It’s impossible to determine” when an execution will be carried out, said Rebecca Woodman, who is an attorney with the Capital Appellate Defender Office for the State Board of Indigents’ Defense Services. “It could be years. It could be never,” she said.

Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994. Since then, 12 men have been sentenced to death. Of those, one sentence was removed at the request of the district attorney, two have had their sentences vacated by the Kansas Supreme Court and others remain in the early stages of appeals.

The appeals process in death penalty cases is greater than any other.

A death sentence triggers a mandatory review by the Kansas Supreme Court. After that there are other avenues of review, and then there are appeals before the federal judiciary, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

For example, the first man sentenced to death in Kansas after reinstatement of the penalty was Gary Kleypas, who was convicted in 1997 of the rape and slaying of Pittsburg State University student Carrie Williams.

His death sentence was overturned in 2001 after the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that jury instructions were faulty. His sentencing case didn’t happen until 2008 when a jury once again recommended the death penalty.

The seven years between the high court ruling in the Kleypas case and another sentencing trial occurred because of another death penalty case — that of Michael Marsh.

In that case, the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the state’s death penalty law because of its requirement that when a jury considering capital punishment finds pro and con factors to be equal, it must choose the death penalty. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the Kansas Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote.

Now, the Kleypas case is on direct appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court. Woodman said it may be years before the court considers the case because of other death penalty cases that have since been put in the pipeline.

Despite the lengthy process, Kansas Attorney General Steve Six supports the death penalty.

“Death penalty litigation should be viewed as a marathon and not a sprint,” Six said. “Families of victims, prosecutors and law enforcement officers understand how important this statute is to our criminal justice system. Some crimes are just too heinous and cruel to receive a lesser sentence.”

Source: LJWorld.com, March 1, 2010

Kansas: Death Penalty Debate Likely Finished

Efforts to abolish the state's death penalty are likely over for this session.

Efforts to abolish the state's death penalty are likely over for this session. After hours of debating the controversial issue, senators voted right down the middle.

Senators spent the better part of 6 hours debating banning capital punishment and replacing it with a life without parole sentence. At the end of the day, the 20-20 tally meant the likely death of Senate Bill 375.

"A lot of people don't want to have this discussion...this is a debate we should have from time to time," said Wichita republican Carolyn McGinn. That wasn't the case for some; lawmakers found themselves split down the middle on whether to even debate the death penalty bill this session. They spent more than an hour arguing whether to send it back to the judicial committee, which would have essentially killed the bill this year. That wasn't the only obstacle for Senate.

Bill 375. Senate majority leader Derek Schmidt, of Independence, proposed an amendment to remove provisions of 375 that actually would abolish the death penalty. And those provisions were the heart of the measure.

If passed, it would have replaced the crime of capital murder with the offense of aggravated murder punishable with life in prison without parole.

Friday's vote would seem to indicate the Kansas death penalty, enacted in 1994 will stay in place. The state hasn't executed an inmate since 1965 and right now, there are 10 inmates on death row.

Source: WIBW News, Feb. 20, 2010

Bill abolishing Kansas death penalty awaits action

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A bill abolishing the death penalty is expected to face a close vote in the Kansas Senate.

The measure was on the Senate's debate calendar for Friday.

It would replace the state's 1994 death penalty law and provide for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Ten men are now under sentence of death in Kansas. The state's last execution was in 1965.

Supporters say the bill reflects a public desire to abolish capital punishment for various reasons, including the flawed administration of the death penalty nationwide. They also say there are alternatives that still protect public safety.

Opponents say the law is narrowly applied to the worst criminals and is working to protect the public.

Death penalty repeal is SB 375.

Source: The Associated Press, Feb. 19, 2010

Kansas Senate takes up repeal of death penalty

TOPEKA — The full Senate will have the chance to debate the death penalty after a panel endorsed a bill abolishing capital punishment in Kansas.

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 7-4 to move along Senate Bill 375 on Friday.

It would eliminate the state's 1994 death penalty law and would replace the crime of capital murder with aggravated murder, punishable by life in prison without parole.

It would apply to crimes committed on or after July 1.

Several lawmakers said the bill still has a difficult path ahead.

Senate Republican Leader Derek Schmidt of Independence urged senators not to move the bill forward, saying it is unlikely to make it to the governor's desk this year.

Although the Senate grappled with the issue last year and has had time to think about it, the House has not had the same opportunity, he said.

"The question is not is the death penalty going to be repealed this year," he said. "The question is, at what point does it stop this year?"

Others disagreed.

"People need to be able to review something as serious as a death penalty consideration, because this is truly life and death we are talking about," said committee Chairman Tim Owens, R-Overland Park.

Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994. Ten men are on death row, but no one has been executed in the state since 1965.

Opponents of capital punishment have argued it is costly and does little to deter violent crimes. Supporters of the death penalty — including prosecutors and victims' family members — have argued that lawmakers can't put a price on justice.

Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, said he voted to reinstate the death penalty and has been a strong supporter of capital punishment. He said he doubted the figures that show death penalty cases are more expensive, but he did question the deterrent factor.

"It doesn't seem to have slowed down the rate of people doing these horrible crimes," he said.

Donovan voted to send the measure out of committee but said he wasn't sure how he would vote during the full senate vote.

Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, said she voted against the measure in committee because that is how she plans to vote when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

Voting yes were Republican senators Dwayne Umbarger, Thayer; John Vratil, Leawood; Mary Pilcher Cook, Shawnee; Donovan, Wichita; Owens, Overland Park; and Democratic senators Laura Kelly, Topeka and David Haley, Kansas City.

Voting no were Republican senators Schodorf, Wichita; Schmidt, Independence; Julia Lynn, Olathe; and Terry Bruce, Hutchinson.

The panel tabled a second bill debated by the Senate last year then returned to the committee with questions about how it might affect current death row inmates if a sentence were overturned.

Source: The Wichita Eagle, January 30, 2010

Kansas could abolish death penalty to cut costs

The state budget crisis has forced Kansas legislators to re-evaluate state spending, leading some lawmakers to review the cost and effectiveness of the Kansas death penalty law.

The Kansas legislature is reviewing Senate Bills 208 and 375, both of which would abolish the death penalty in Kansas. Senate Bill 208 was introduced and debated last year, but no action was taken on the bill.

After 3 days of hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider Senate Bill 375 Friday, Sen. Marci Francisco (D-Lawrence), said.

"The major concern that brought this topic up again was looking at the cost," Francisco said. "Obviously we are in a tight budget situation."

A death penalty prosecution can cost as much as a million dollars, she said, while a life sentence without parole could save taxpayers half a million dollars or more for each case.

According to Senate Bill 208, the median cost of a non-death-penalty murder case was approximately 70 percent less than the median cost of a death sentence.

Kansas re-enacted the death penalty in 1994, but has not carried out an execution since 1965, according to Senate Bill 375.

According to the National Center for State Courts website, Kansas has 10 inmates on death row. As the bill now stands, the abolishment of the death penalty, if passed, would not take effect until July 1, 2010.

Although Francisco is not a member of the Judiciary Committee, she said that she was glad the committee had decided to review the death penalty, and that she hoped to debate a bill in the full senate.

"I think senators feel this is a good time to engage again in this discussion and debate," she said.

George Dungan, a senior from Lincoln, Neb. and vice-president of KU Young Democrats, said he was glad legislators had decided to debate the death penalty, especially during a time of economic instability for the state.

"In a time when Kansas is struggling to make ends meet, it seems absurd to continue an ineffective and expensive program, such as the death penalty," he said.

Eric Foss, a senior from Overland Park and president of KU College Republicans, said his support for the death penalty hinged on the effectiveness of a state's appeals process.

"For me, it's not an argument of whether it is a more effective punishment," he said. "We need to make sure we are'nt executing innocent people. That's my primary concern."

Foss said he thought it was possible the death penalty would end in Kansas.

"I think now, more than ever, because of budget constraints it is pretty likely that the decision to outlaw the death penalty may be made," he said.

Kansas is one of 35 states with the death penalty, according to the National Center for State Courts. 15 states have abolished the death penalty, the most recent being New Mexico, which outlawed the death penalty last year.

Source: The (Univ. of Kansas) Daily Kansan, January 28, 2010

Nebraska: Amendment to explore death penalty costs fails

Nebraska state senators on Wednesday resoundingly turned down a proposal by Omaha Sen. Brenda Council to determine the costs of carrying out the death penalty in the state.

Senators had opened the day debating repeal of the death penalty with a bill (LB306) that would substitute a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. In that debate, proponents talked about the need to know the costs of death penalty cases to Nebraska taxpayers.

Other states had figured out the costs, Council said. Nebraskans should know, too.

Kansas, for example, found the median cost for death penalty cases, through execution, was $1.26 million. The median cost for non-death penalty cases through the end of incarceration was $740,000.

It found investigation costs were 3 times higher for death penalty cases; trial costs 16 times greater, partly because of the length of trial; and appeal costs were 21 times greater.

The Kansas report stressed that actual cost figures for those cases in that state don't exist. No cases have completed the appeals process and resulted in executions.

A little more than 90 minutes into the repeal debate Wednesday, Council filed a replacement amendment to direct State Auditor Mike Foley to find and report on those costs.

Saying that she absolutely supported repealing the death penalty, and she didn't personally care if carrying out a death sentence cost nothing, Council said taxpayers needed to know the costs to determine if the state was wisely spending taxpayer dollars.

Capital punishment is the most inefficient use of tax dollars in fighting crime, she said. And if it's merely a matter of revenge, the state should not be engaged in that effort, she said.

Council's amendment required what she called a responsible and objective audit that would have included costs to the attorney general's office, the state Department of Correctional Services, counties where trials occur, public defenders, the Center for Public Advocacy, court-appointed attorneys, appeals courts and district courts.

Speaker Mike Flood said Council's amendment changed the debate and should have been introduced as a separate bill with a hearing.

Council maintains capital cases are enormously expensive and wasteful in a cash-strapped state that could use the money in more effective ways to keep the public safe.

Lincoln Sen. Danielle Conrad said the number of sworn officers in the Nebraska State Patrol has gone down from 525 in 2002 to 505 in 2009 and a proposed 488 this year. And the Nebraska crime lab needs more resources to overcome serious problems with the ability to carry out its role in investigation of crimes.

But some senators who support the death penalty said knowing the costs wouldn't matter to them or change their minds.

The state has the right and the duty to impose the death penalty for certain heinous crimes, said Flood, whose district experienced a capital crime in 2002 -- the murders of 5 people in a Norfolk bank. The "ringleader" in that crime, Jose Sandoval, was eventually convicted of killing seven people, he said.

Trying to compare costs of capital crimes with other murder cases doesn't make sense because cases are so different, Flood said.

The human costs of those crimes are just as important in deciding use of the death penalty, he said.

Supporters of Council's amendment said senators should never be afraid of information.

Council said there is discussion about others taking on the proposal to find out the costs, amending it and introducing it as a standalone bill.

Knowing the costs may not change minds in the Legislature, she said, but it might change minds among taxpayers.

Senators will take up the repeal bill again Thursday.

Source: Lincoln Journal-Star, January 20, 2010

Kansas Senate again looks at abolishing state's death penalty

The Kansas Senate is again looking at abolishing the state's death penalty, unused since 1965.

But some lawmakers said they did not expect a repeal any time soon. Even though debating the death penalty has become an almost annual tradition in the Senate, opponents to capital punishment still face long odds.

The proposal before lawmakers this year would prohibit capital punishment for any crimes after July 1; crimes committed before that could still warrant execution, so the 10 men now on death row could still be put to death.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled 3 days of hearings this week to hear from supporters and opponents of capital punishment.

On Tuesday, it was the opponents turn. Bishop Michael Jackels of the Catholic Diocese of Wichita told the panel of lawmakers that life without parole was a more humane alternative to a death sentence.

"Capital punishment should be used only if there are no other means to protect the common good," he said.

"In today's world and especially in our country there is no need to impose the death penalty."

University of Colorado sociology professor Michael Radelet said there was little evidence that capital punishment deterred crime, and said the state would be better to spend its money catching criminals.

"If you really want to do something about crime and homicide in Kansas, do something about the 800 homicides that remain unsolved," Radelet said.

But that did not convince Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, an Independence Republican. Schmidt supports the death penalty, saying the statute was carefully crafted to reserve execution for the worst murderers.

Last year, opponents argued that the expensive legal appeals involved in capital cases made life in prison without parole a more fiscally responsible alternative.

A bill repealing the death penalty made it to the Senate floor, where it prompted 3 hours of passionate debate before Schmidt successfully sent the bill back for further study.

Supporters of the death penalty statute are to testify beginning today.

Source: Kansas City Star, January 19, 2010

Kansas: Death penalty among key issues this session

While the main business of the Legislature will be writing a budget for the next fiscal year, there are still many other issues that will be debated.

A proposal to repeal the state's death penalty. Supporters of the repeal say the death penalty hasn't worked as a punishment, and is much more costly because of the additional legal procedures needed to litigate a capital murder case. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1994, there have been no executions in Kansas as appeals and challenges to the law continue.

Source: Lawrence Journal-World, January 11, 2010