District Court Judge Calls Kansas Death Penalty Racially Biased, Costly, and Ineffective as a Deterrent

On April 16, 2025, Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper issued his order in the com­bined cas­es of Hugo Villaneuva-Morales and Antoine Fielder, broad­ly con­demn­ing the Kansas death penal­ty as cost­ly, racial­ly biased, and inef­fec­tive as a deter­rent. Judge Klapper’s order fol­lows an exten­sive evi­den­tiary hear­ing and pro­vides thor­ough and detailed find­ings on an array of con­sti­tu­tion­al ques­tions relat­ed to the use of the death penal­ty in the state. 

Mr. Villaneuva-Morales and Mr. Fielder were ini­tial­ly declared death eli­gi­ble by Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree, but after an evi­den­tiary hear­ing in October 2024 that raised con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges to the death penal­ty, he with­drew his request for a death sen­tence in both cas­es. This was the fourth time in recent years that defen­dants have brought con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenges to the death penal­ty in Kansas, with the result that pros­e­cu­tors with­drew their intent to seek death pri­or to trial. 

Judge Klapper was par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal of the process by which juries are select­ed in cap­i­tal cas­es declar­ing it to be ​“so flawed” that it fails to pro­tect defen­dants from racial bias and ​“must be reformed[.]” The process of death qual­i­fi­ca­tion in cap­i­tal tri­als came under intense scruti­ny dur­ing the October evi­den­tiary hear­ing in the com­bined cas­es. The law requires that every­one who serves on a cap­i­tal jury must be able to poten­tial­ly vote for death dur­ing the sen­tenc­ing phase of the tri­al, mean­ing that any juror who cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly oppos­es the death penal­ty is auto­mat­i­cal­ly dis­qual­i­fied. At the evi­den­tiary hear­ing, Harvard Law School Professor Carol Steiker tes­ti­fied that “[Capital, or death qual­i­fied] juries are skewed in a way that is not the case … in sen­tenc­ing on the noncapital side.” 

Judge Klapper found that evi­dence pre­sent­ed by attor­neys for Mr. Villaneuva-Morales and Mr. Fielder showed the death qual­i­fi­ca­tion process dis­crim­i­nates against Black peo­ple, women, and peo­ple of faith. He cit­ed to a sur­vey study of 500 jury-eli­gi­ble Wyandotte County res­i­dents by University of California Law Professor Mona Lynch which found that 64% of white respon­dents sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, com­pared to only 41% of Black respon­dents. Judge Klapper also not­ed ​“a sim­i­lar gap between women and men[.]” Citing to Professor Lynch’s research, Judge Klapper found that death qual­i­fi­ca­tion ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly” raised the num­ber peo­ple in a jury pool who favored the death penal­ty because “[d]eath penal­ty oppo­nents were over­whelm­ing­ly exclud­ed” – by a mar­gin of almost two-to-one when com­pared to those who favor the death penal­ty (60.4% of oppo­nents were exclud­ed com­pared to rough­ly 34% of supporters). 

Judge Klapper also crit­i­cized racial inequities in cap­i­tal charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing out­comes. He drew atten­tion to the fact that for the 15 death sen­tences imposed in Kansas since 1994, ​“in the major­i­ty of these cas­es the vic­tims were white women and there are no cas­es with a white defen­dant and a black vic­tim.” Judge Klapper observed the same dis­par­i­ties in charg­ing deci­sions, con­clud­ing gen­er­al­ly that “[t]he fac­tors which dis­tin­guish death sen­tence cas­es from non-death sen­tence cas­es are the race and gen­der of the vic­tim, and the race and gen­der of the defen­dant,” an out­come he char­ac­ter­ized as ​“far from” an ​“even-hand­ed, ratio­nal and con­sis­tent impo­si­tion[] of a death sen­tence under law[.]” 

Citing to an analy­sis of the cost of the death penal­ty in Kansas and Wyandotte County by Professor Brittney Street, an expert in eco­nom­ics and pub­lic cost data, Judge Klapper, found ​“the death penal­ty is more cost­ly than any oth­er pun­ish­ment in every state exam­ined includ­ing Kansas” and not­ed that ​“ini­tial tri­al costs alone are approx­i­mate­ly $226,000 more per case when the death penal­ty is sought[.]” Wyandotte County alone, Judge Klapper not­ed, has ​“incurred $4,289,022 in addi­tion­al cost for cap­i­tal cas­es from 1994 to present.” 

Regarding the effi­ca­cy of the death penal­ty as a deter­rent to mur­der, Judge Klapper cit­ed to analy­sis by the National Research Council to sup­port his con­clu­sion that “[t]he sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty has found no reli­able evi­dence of the death penal­ty being a deter­rent to homi­cides … Murder rates are and have been inde­pen­dent of the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty or the insti­tu­tion of hav­ing a death penalty.” 

Mr. Villaneuva-Morales and Mr. Fielder were rep­re­sent­ed by The American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project (ACLU), the ACLU of Kansas, Democracy Forward, the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, Hogan Lovells, and Ali & Lockwood in their con­sti­tu­tion­al pre-tri­al chal­lenges to the death penal­ty in Wyandotte County. A plea agree­ment was reached in December 2024 in the case of Mr. Fielder and he was sen­tenced to life with­out parole. Mr. Villanueva-Morales was tried for cap­i­tal mur­der but ulti­mate­ly the state with­drew its request for the death penal­ty in February 2025. Sentencing for Mr. Villanueva-Morales is sched­uled for July 2025. 

Kansas’ last exe­cu­tion took place in 1965. There are nine pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on death row in Kansas. The last per­son sen­tenced to death in Kansas was Kyle Trevor Flack, who was sen­tenced in 2016. In 2022, the Kansas Supreme Court reject­ed a facial argu­ment against the state’s death qual­i­fi­ca­tion process in State v. Carr and affirmed the death sen­tences of Jonathan and Reginald Carr. However, in its opin­ion, the Court also not­ed that alle­ga­tions that the death qual­i­fi­ca­tion process is racial­ly biased ​“most cer­tain­ly war­rant care­ful analy­sis and scrutiny.”