On October 17, the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, a state agency that enforces civ­il rights, unan­i­mous­ly passed a res­o­lu­tion in favor of end­ing the death penal­ty. The Commission urged the Kentucky General Assembly to repeal the death penal­ty and Governor Steven Beshear to sign any such leg­is­la­tion that is brought before him. The res­o­lu­tion under­scored the unfair­ness of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: “[S]tatistics con­firm that the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly imposed on minori­ties and the poor.” Moreover, the res­o­lu­tion point­ed to the high error rate in Kentucky cap­i­tal cas­es: ​“Since 1976, when Kentucky rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty, 50 of the 78 peo­ple sen­tenced to death have had their death sen­tence or con­vic­tion over­turned, due to mis­con­duct or seri­ous errors that occurred dur­ing their tri­al. This rep­re­sents an unac­cept­able error rate of more than 60 per­cent.” The res­o­lu­tion will be giv­en to each leg­is­la­tor and to the governor.

(“Human Rights Commission pass­es res­o­lu­tion to abol­ish death penal­ty in Kentucky,” Courier-Journal, October 18, 2012). See Recent Legislative Activity for oth­er states’ actions on the death penal­ty. See also New Voices.

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