Kentucky Legislature Conducts Hearing on the Commonwealth’s Death Penalty

A joint committee of the Kentucky legislature conducted a hearing on July 6, 2018 on the Commonwealth’s rarely used death penalty, including a presentation by supporters and opponents of a bill to abolish capital punishment. The General Assembly’s Interim Joint Committee on Judiciary took testimony from prosecutors, defense attorneys, correctional officials, and legislators on issues ranging from costs and arbitrariness to the length of the appeal process.

Though Kentucky currently has 31 prisoners on death row, and prosecutors across the Commonwealth have filed 52 notices of intent to seek a death sentence, only three people have been executed since 1976. The last execution took place in 2008, and only one death sentence has been imposed in the last five years.

Rep. Jason Nemes (R-Louisville), one of the sponsors of a House bill to abolish the death penalty, told the committee, “Kentucky should get out of the business of killing its citizens – period.” Criticizing capital punishment based on his pro-life and small government views, Nemes noted that more than 150 people have been exonerated since the 1970s after having been wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S., and 49 out of the 97 death sentences imposed in Kentucky have already been overturned.

“We don’t believe the government can adequately fill potholes,” Nemes said. “And if we don’t believe the government can do that perfectly, then why should we give it the power to do that which is irreversible?”

Senate Minority Leader Ray S. Jones (D-Pikeville) said that infrequent executions erode whatever deterrent effect the death penalty might have. Instead, he said, the death penalty creates a “false hope of closure.”

Rep. John Blanton (R-Salyersville), a retired Kentucky State Police officer and an execution proponent, responded, “[t]he problem is not the death sentence, the problem is the length of time we allow these people to look for everything under the sun.” “Let’s speed up the process,” he said.

The Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy estimates the cost of the death penalty to Kentucky taxpayers at about $10 million per year. Executions have been on hold in the Commonwealth since 2010, when a state judge placed an injunction halting all executions while courts reviewed the lethal injection protocol.

Andrew English, general counsel for the Justice Cabinet, said the Department of Corrections has attempted to “rewrite the regulations to achieve conformity with the court rulings,” but that “[t]here’s an ever-evolving change in the landscape when it comes to federal and state courts, with the death penalty.” Kentucky, like other states, has encountered problems with determining what drugs are appropriate and available for use in executions.