NEW VOICES: Former Kentucky Officials Rethinking the Wisdom of High Death Penalty Expenditures

The for­mer direc­tor of Kentucky’s courts recent­ly rec­om­mend­ed that the state stop wast­ing mon­ey on the death penal­ty and direct those resources where they are need­ed more. ​“We’ve got a sys­tem in Kentucky where there’s not enough mon­ey for pub­lic advo­cates, for pros­e­cu­tors, for drug courts, fam­i­ly courts, for juve­nile ser­vices, for reha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grams, and we’re using the mon­ey we have in a way I think is unwise,” said Jason Nemes, for­mer direc­tor of the state Administrative Office of the Courts. ​“Every dol­lar that goes to our inef­fec­tive cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is a dol­lar tak­en away from oth­er needs… The ben­e­fit to pub­lic safe­ty is low. Are we real­ly pro­tect­ing the pub­lic?” he asked. 

In over 30 years, Kentucky has car­ried out three exe­cu­tions. The state spends about $8 mil­lion a year pros­e­cut­ing, defend­ing and incar­cer­at­ing death row inmates, accord­ing to an esti­mate by the state Department of Public Advocacy. Critics of the death penal­ty ques­tion whether this inef­fec­tive sys­tem is one the state can afford, espe­cial­ly as state-ordered bud­get cuts are already affect­ing many aspects of its judi­cial branch. Former Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Lambert agreed that death-penal­ty cas­es often become ​“legal mon­sters,” and that ​“it’s impos­si­ble to stream­line death-penal­ty lit­i­ga­tion to jus­ti­fy the cost, because doing so would dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase the risk of wrongful executions.” 

Warren Commonwealth’s Attorney Chris Cohron, who also is pres­i­dent of the Kentucky Commonwealth’s Attorneys Association, acknowl­edged that when he pros­e­cutes a death-penal­ty case, he knows it will most like­ly be with him for the rest of his career, per­haps 15 years or more. ​“It’ll be a race to see if we can get the sen­tence imposed or whether the defen­dant dies a nat­ur­al death,” he said. ​“It’s very, very frustrating.”

(R. Dunlop, ​“Kentucky’s trou­bled death-penal­ty sys­tem lets cas­es lan­guish for decades,” Louisville Courier-Journal, November 8, 2009). The arti­cle makes ref­er­ence to DPIC’s report, Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis. See also Costs and New Voices.