The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky’s sec­ond-largest news­pa­per, announced it was end­ing its long-held sup­port for the death penal­ty, and now believes the state leg­is­la­ture should abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Describing its pre­vi­ous posi­tion as ​“keep it but fix it,” the edi­tors stat­ed, ​“we must now con­cede that the death penal­ty is not going to be fixed and, in fact, prob­a­bly can­not be fixed at any defen­si­ble cost to tax­pay­ers.” Citing the 2011 American Bar Association assess­ment of Kentucky’s death penal­ty, the Herald-Leader said the sys­tem was ​“rife with injus­tices and the poten­tial for error.” Among the rea­sons cit­ed in the paper’s edi­to­r­i­al for the chang­ing its posi­tion was the neg­a­tive effects of the death penal­ty on vic­tims’ fam­i­lies and cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers. It quot­ed Dr. Allen Ault, who over­saw exe­cu­tions in Georgia, and who said, ​“I do not know one [cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer] who has not expe­ri­enced a neg­a­tive impact,” not­ing an increased risk of depres­sion, sub­stance abuse, and suicide.

The edi­to­r­i­al con­clud­ed by not­ing that the death penal­ty was already pub­licly dis­fa­vored, as evi­denced by the declin­ing num­ber of death sen­tences: ​“Ending the death penal­ty would cod­i­fy what juries of Kentuckians and pros­e­cu­tors have alreay decided.”

The Kentucky House Judiciary Committee is sched­uled to hear a death penal­ty repeal bill on March 9.

(Editorial, ​“Ky. should abol­ish the death penal­ty,” Lexington Herald-Leader, March 4, 2016). See Editorials and New Voices.

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