Kansas Death Penalty Rarely Used in 18 Years

Kansas rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty in 1994, but no exe­cu­tions have been car­ried out since 1965. On aver­age, the state sen­tences less than one per­son to death per year. Four of those death sen­tences have been over­turned in the ear­ly round of appeals, includ­ing that of Scott Cheever, whose cap­i­tal con­vic­tion was unan­i­mous­ly reversed by the Kansas Supreme Court on August 24. No death sen­tence that has reached the state’s high­est court has been upheld. During Cheever’s 2007 tri­al, a psy­chi­a­trist revealed the defen­dan­t’s psy­cho­log­i­cal records with­out his con­sent, there­by vio­lat­ing his right against self-incrim­i­na­tion. Donna Schneweis of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty com­ment­ed on what this lat­est rever­sal meant, ​“In a death penal­ty tri­al, even a small mis­take can mean the dif­fer­ence between life and death. This case is anoth­er exam­ple of just how flawed the Kansas death penal­ty is. We can’t elim­i­nate the pos­si­bil­i­ty of error.” 

(J. Milburn, ​“Death row inmate’s con­vic­tion over­turned in sher­if­f’s death,” Associated Press, August 24, 2012.) See Arbitrariness and Kansas.