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.