Several legal authorities and public officials are calling on Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to suspend the death penalty pending resolution of the state’s budget crisis. Kentucky’s public defender system will exhaust its current budget by May 21 with two months remaining in the fiscal year, forcing it to shut down. “The budget shortfall creates a likelihood that counsel will be unavailable or unable to properly proceed, thereby jeopardizing prosecutions and resulting in flawed, unreliable outcomes, expanded litigation and reversal of convictions,” said Daniel T. Goyette, Chief Public Defender for Jefferson County and an Adjunct Professor at the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. “As a former Commonwealth’s Attorney, I see insurmountable legal obstacles to prosecuting death penalty cases when the defendants are not adequately represented by counsel for any reason, including a budget crisis,” added Marc S. Murphy, former Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney. “The constitution guarantees an accused defendant the right to have effective assistance of counsel” said Robert G. Lawson, former dean of the University of Kentucky College of Law, who has been extensively involved in law reform efforts in Kentucky as principal drafter of the Kentucky Penal Code. “We are hearing from the people in the defender system that they are unable to render effective assistance due to the budget cuts. I support a moratorium on executions at this time.”

Former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice James E. Keller of Lexington said: “I’m not opposed in principle to the death penalty, but at this time I support a moratorium on the death penalty while the state reviews whether it should be retained, or at least reviews how it has been implemented since it has been reinstated.”

Another legal expert, Chase Law School Professor Michael J. Z. Mannheimer, an authority on federal death penalty cases, said, “Prosecuting and defending capital cases causes such a drain on public resources that I believe the death penalty to be unwise even in normal times. In the current economic environment, pushing ahead with capital cases and actual executions is fiscally irresponsible.”

(Press Release, March 9, 2009; see also B. Musgrave, “Public Defenders Seek More State Help,” Lexington Herald-Leader, Mar. 7, 2009). See Costs.