Death Off the Table for Four Former Death-Row Prisoners, as Death Row Continues to Shrink Nationwide

In a peri­od of less than one week, four for­mer death-row pris­on­ers in four sep­a­rate states learned that they no longer face exe­cu­tion, con­tribut­ing to the con­tin­u­ing decline in the num­ber of peo­ple on death rows across the U.S. The result of the unre­lat­ed court pro­ceed­ings — a resen­tenc­ing hear­ing in Pennsylvania, a non-cap­i­tal grand jury indict­ment in Louisiana, a prosecutor’s deci­sion to drop death in Indiana, and a court rul­ing on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in Alabama—illus­trate the ongo­ing ero­sion of the death-row pop­u­la­tion in America, which has fall­en in size in each of the past 17 years. On September 10, 2018, Daniel Saranchak (pic­tured, left) was resen­tenced to life with­out parole in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, fol­low­ing the rever­sal of his death sen­tence by a fed­er­al court in October 2015. That court said Saranchak had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the penal­ty phase of his orig­i­nal tri­al in 1994 and grant­ed him a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. In November 2000, Saranchak came with­in 45 min­utes of being exe­cut­ed before receiv­ing a stay. Three days after Saranchak’s resen­tenc­ing, a Jefferson Parish, Louisiana grand jury returned a non-cap­i­tal indict­ment against Teddy Chester (pic­tured, mid­dle left), who had been sen­tenced to death in 1997. Chester was grant­ed a new tri­al on June 11, 2018 based on evi­dence of his counsel’s fail­ure to chal­lenge the pros­e­cu­tion case against him and DNA evi­dence that had not been pre­sent­ed to Chester’s tri­al jury sug­gest­ing that he is not the killer. Chester and his co-defen­dant, Elbert Ratcliff, each claim that the oth­er shot cab dri­ver John Adams in order to rob him. The grand jury indict­ed Chester for sec­ond-degree mur­der, which car­ries an auto­mat­ic life sen­tence if con­vict­ed. Ratcliff was pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of sec­ond-degree mur­der. On September 14, a St. Joseph County, Indiana tri­al judge approved the prosecution’s motion to remove the death penal­ty as a pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment against Wayne Kubsch (pic­tured, mid­dle right). Kubsch will face a max­i­mum sen­tence of life with­out parole at his third tri­al in a 1998 triple homi­cide. Kubsch main­tains his inno­cence, and his sec­ond con­vic­tion was over­turned because ​“crit­i­cal evi­dence” was with­held. The vic­tims’ fam­i­lies sup­port­ed the prosecution’s deci­sion to seek a life sen­tence. ​“I believe this is the right deci­sion,” said Diane Mauk, moth­er of vic­tim Beth Kubsch. ​“I feel that in the state of Indiana it would be anoth­er 15 years or more before an exe­cu­tion would take place, if it ever hap­pened. … It’s time to get jus­tice for our fam­i­lies.” And also on September 14, the Alabama Supreme Court found death-row pris­on­er Anthony Lane (pic­tured, right) inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, vacat­ed his death sen­tence, and direct­ed the tri­al court in Jefferson County to resen­tence Lane to life with­out parole. The Alabama state courts had pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ed Lane’s claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, but had applied an uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly unsup­port­ed def­i­n­i­tion of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in reach­ing that con­clu­sion. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed that rul­ing in 2015 and returned the case to the state courts to decide the issue using an appropriate standard.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics brief on May 20, 2017 and DPIC’s year end reports in 2016 and 2017 have shown that removals from death row — most­ly in the form of resen­tenc­ings — have out­stripped new death sen­tences every year since 2001.

(Peter E. Bortner, Saranchak leaves death row, will spend life behind bars, Pottsville Republican Herald, September 11, 2018; Chad Calder, Teddy Chester indict­ed once again in 1995 killing of Metairie cab dri­ver, The New Orleans Advocate, September 13, 2018; Bob Blake, State drops pur­suit of death penal­ty in Mishawaka triple mur­der case, South Bend Tribune, September 15, 2018; Anna Beam, AL supreme court revers­es Anthony Lane’s death sen­tence, September 15, 2018.) See Sentencing and Death Row.