State & Federal
Kansas
News & Developments
News
Jan 20, 2023
Kansas Capital Defendant Moves to Bar Death Penalty, Invoking State Constitution’s ‘Strict Scrutiny’ For Life and Liberty Issues
A Kansas capital defendant is challenging the prosecution’s decision to pursue the death penalty in his case, invoking a heightened standard of review the Kansas constitution applies to infringements of fundamental rights.
Read MoreJan 26, 2022
Kansas Supreme Court Rules that Death Penalty Does Not Violate State Constitution’s ‘Inalienable’ Right to Life
The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penalty against two death-row prisoners’ challenges that capital punishment violates the “inalienable” right to life enshrined in the Kansas state constitution.
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Nov 16, 2020
Kansas Death-Row Prisoners File Suit Challenging Conditions of Confinement
Two death-sentenced prisoners in Kansas have filed a federal lawsuit alleging that the state’s policy of automatic solitary confinement for death-row prisoners is unconstitutional. The two prisoners, Sidney Gleason and Scott Cheever, have been held in isolation for 14 and 12 years, respectively. Seven of the ten people on Kansas’ death row have been kept in solitary confinement for more than ten years.
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Mar 23, 2020
News Brief — U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against Kansas Death-Row Prisoner on Right to Present an Insanity Defense
NEWS (3/23/20): U.S. Supreme Court — The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against a Kansas death-row prisoner who had argued his conviction violated due process because he had not been permitted to present an insanity defense. In a 6 – 3 decision authored by Justice Elena Kagan, the Court upheld the conviction of James Kahler for murdering his estranged wife, two teenage daughters, and a fourth family member in 2009, while in a state of severe depression from the breakdown of his marriage.
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Oct 09, 2019
Supreme Court Opens 2019 – 2020 Term with Consideration of Death Penalty Cases
The 2019 – 2020 U.S. Supreme Court term opened on October 7 with the Court declining to review challenges to death-penalty court decisions from a number of states and with the Court hearing argument in a Kansas death-penalty case raising constitutional questions about a defendant’s right to present an insanity defense.
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Nov 07, 2017
NEW VOICES: Former Law Enforcement Officials Say Arizona, Kansas Should End Death Penalty
Former high-ranking law enforcement officials from Arizona and Kansas have called on their states to end the death penalty. In separate op-ed stories one week apart, former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard (pictured, left) and former Kansas Secretary of Corrections Roger Werholtz (pictured, right) conclude that the capital punishment schemes in their states have failed and should be abandoned. In a November 5 op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star headlined Arizona’s 40-year experiment with the death penalty has failed, Attorney General Goddard said “Arizona does not have a good track…
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Nov 18, 2016
BOOKS: “The Case of Rose Bird,” and the Continuing Power of Money in Judicial Elections
In 1986, California voters removed Rose Bird, the state’s first female supreme court chief justice, from office after conservative groups spent more than $10 million in a recall effort that portrayed her as “soft on crime,” emphasizing her court opinions overturning death sentences that had been unconstitutionally imposed. Ten years later, Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Penny White lost a retention election after death penalty proponents and other conservative groups targeted her for voting with the court majority in a 3 – 2 decision overturning a death sentence that had been imposed in…
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Nov 09, 2016
Pro-Death Penalty Referenda Prevail in 3 States; Kansas Retains 4 Justices Attacked for Death Penalty Decisions
Voters in three states approved pro-death penalty ballot questions Tuesday, while in a fourth, voters turned back an effort to oust four Justices who had been criticized for granting defendants relief in capital cases. Amid widespread agreement that California’s death penalty system is broken, the state’s voters rejected Proposition 62, which would have abolished the state’s death penalty and replaced it with life without possibility of parole plus restitution, and narrowly approved a competing ballot initiative, Proposition 66, which seeks to limit state court death penalty appeals and expedite executions.…
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May 18, 2016
Support for the Death Penalty by Republican Legislators No Longer a Sure Thing
One year after the Nebraska legislature voted to repeal the death penalty and overrode a gubernatorial veto of that measure, actions in legislatures across the country suggest that the state’s efforts signalled a growing movement against the death penalty by conservative legislators and that support for the death penalty among Republican legislators is no longer a given. Reporting in The Washington Post, Amber Phillips writes that Republican legislators in ten states sponsored or co-sponsored legislation to repeal capital punishment during the current legislative sessions. She reports that although these repeal…
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Jan 20, 2016
U.S. Supreme Court Reverses 3 Kansas Decisions Overturning Death Penalties
In an 8 – 1 decision in Kansas v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decisions of the Kansas Supreme Court granting new sentencing hearings in three capital cases, restoring the death sentences of Jonathan Carr, Reginald Carr, Jr., and Sidney Gleason pending further appellate review. The Kansas Supreme Court had vacated the men’s death sentences because the jury had not been informed, as required by the Kansas Supreme Court, that mitigating factors presented during the sentencing proceeding to spare a defendant’s life do not need to be proven beyond a…
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Aug 26, 2015
NEW VOICES: Kansas Federation of College Republicans Urges Repeal of Death Penalty
The Kansas Federation of College Republicans unanimously adopted a resolution calling for repeal of the death penalty in their state. “More young conservatives like myself recognize that our broken and fallible system of capital punishment in no way matches up with our conservative values,” said Dalton Glasscock, a Wichita State University student and chairman of the federation. Citing pro-life views and fiscal responsibility, the group urged Kansas legislators to repeal the state’s death penalty. Eric Pahls, president of Kansas University College Republicans, said, “I think if, as Republicans, we call…
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Timeline
1907 - Governor Hoch abolishes Kansas’ death penalty for the first time.
1935 - The death penalty is reinstated in Kansas.
1965 - George York and James Latham are executed in a double hanging. These are the last executions Kansas has carried out to date.
1979-1985 - The Kansas State Legislature attempts to reinstate the death penalty, but Governor Carlin vetoes reinstatement legislation during this period.
1994 - The current Kansas death penalty statute is enacted once Governor Finney allowed it into law without her signature.
1995 - The Kansas legislature abolishes the affirmative insanity defense which allowed a defendant to be acquitted if they did not understand the difference between right and wrong at the time of their crime.
2001 - In State v. Kleypas, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state statute, which allowed the imposition of the death penalty when mitigating and aggravating factors were of equal weight, is unconstitutional under the 8th amendment.
2006 - In Kansas v. Marsh, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that the Kansas death penalty statute does not violate the 8th amendment, reversing the Kansas Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Kleypas. As long as juries are able to consider all of the relevant mitigating evidences, states can require the death penalty when aggravating and mitigating factors are equally balanced.
2013 - In Kansas v. Cheever, the Kansas Supreme Court determines that the Fifth amendment does not prevent the prosecution from introducing psychiatric evidence to rebut psychiatric evidenced presented by the defense.
2016 - In Kansas v. Carr, the U.S. Supreme Court reverse the decisions of the Kansas Supreme Court, restoring the death sentences of Jonathan Carr, Reginald Carr, Jr., and Sidney Gleason. The Kansas Supreme Court had vacated the men’s death sentences because the jury was not informed that mitigating factors presented during the sentencing proceedings to spare a defendant’s life do not need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
2020 - In Kahler v. Kansas, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that Kansas’ approach towards providing for an insanity defense based on mental disease or defect does not violate due process. The state is not required to adopt an insanity test to determine a defendant’s understanding of right and wrong at the time of the crime.
2022 - The Kansas Supreme Court affirms the death sentences of Jonathan and Reginald Carr, concluding that the Kansas constitution does not stipulate that the inalienable right to life and liberty could not be forfeited.
Famous Cases
The Clutter Family
The murders of Herbert Clutter, his wife and two of his children in Holcomb became one of Kansas’ most famous cases when Truman Capote chronicled the murders and the trial in his 1966 book, “In Cold Blood.”
Richard “Dick” Hickok and Perry Smith, two parolees, were convicted of the murders. They were both executed by hanging on April 14, 1965.
Michael Marsh
Marsh was convicted and sentenced to death for the killings of Marry Ane and Marry Elizabeth Pusch in 1996. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty statute was unconstitutional because of its requirement that, when a jury finds during a sentencing hearing that the mitigating and aggravating factors are equal, they must choose death.
The US Supreme Court overturned this decision in June 2006. Justice Scalia wrote a concurring opinion in this case where he claimed:
“It should be noted at the outset that the dissent does not discuss a single case—not one—in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops by the abolition lobby.”
See DPIC’s webpage Executed But Possibly Innocent for examples of cases in which likely innocent death-row prisoners have been executed.
Notable Exonerations
While there have been no death penalty exonerations in Kansas, there have been notable felony exonerations including the cases of Eddie James Lowery and Joe Jones.
• Eddie James Lowery was convicted of rape in 1982 after he falsely confessed to a crime he did not commit. Lowery was questioned for an entire day with no food and no rest, and was not provided a lawyer when he requested one. Under duress, he confessed to the rape hoping to be found innocent during his trial. Instead, because he was not under arrest at the time, the court allowed his false confession to be used in the trial. He was paroled after nearly 10 years, and was not exonerated by DNA evidence until 2002.
• Joe Jones was convicted of kidnapping, assault and rape in 1986 and given a life sentence. The victim identified a different man when presented with a photo array, but identified Jones as her rapist in person. Jones was exonerated by DNA evidence in 1992 after court officials allowed the rape kit to be tested.
Notable Commutations/Clemencies
Before his term ended, Governor George Docking (1957-1960) commuted the sentences of two of the five inmates on death row, Earl Wilson and Bobbie Joe Spencer. Governor Docking was also responsible for a hiatus in Kansas executions between 1954 and 1960. The only executions that took place in Kansas during those years were at the US Army and Air Force Disciplinary Barracks.
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
• The Kansas death penalty has been abolished and reinstated three times. The state’s death penalty was first abolished on January 30, 1907 by Governor Hoch. For that reason, January 30 is celebrated by KCADP as “Abolition Day” in Kansas.
• In 1935, the death penalty was reinstated, but no executions took place under the law until 1944. Kansas had this death penalty statute in effect until the 1972 US Supreme Court ruling that struck down the death penalty.
• After the 1976 US Supreme Court rulings that upheld the constitutionality of several states’ death penalty statutes, the Kansas legislature made numerous attempts to reinstate the death penalty. Governor Carlin vetoed reinstatement legislation in 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1985. The current death penalty statute was enacted in 1994 when Governor Finney allowed it to become law without her signature.
• In 2010, the Kansas Senate was one vote short of voting to replace the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole for the crime of aggravated murder.
Other Interesting Facts
• Of states that still allow the death penalty, Kansas was the last state to reinstate the death penalty in the modern era. (New York reinstated its death penalty in 1995, but abolished it in 2007.)
• Kansas has not executed anyone since 1965.
• The U.S. Military’s death row is located at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Ad Astra per Aspera Statue on the Capitol Dome. Ad Astra per Aspera, meaning “To the Stars through Difficulty” is the Kansas State Motto. Photo by David Cook.
