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Sunday, November 08, 2009
Courts - "Kentucky's troubled death-penalty system lets cases languish for decades"
Like the Gary Post Tribune, quoted in the entry below, the Louisville Courier Journal today has devoted a lot of space to the death penalty, but in this case to the length of time it takes to complete the appeals. R.G. Dunlop has a long story headed "Killer's appeals drag on 29 years," that concludes:
No single reason explains why [Karu Gene] White's case has dragged on so long. Interviews with more than three-dozen people familiar with it, and a review of the voluminous court file, suggest a variety of factors that include:A long companion story by the same reporter is headed "Kentucky's troubled death-penalty system lets cases languish for decades." It begins:The successive involvement of eight circuit court judges, who had to review the increasingly vast record and understand the array of issues before taking action.
A protracted dispute between McNally and the state Department of Public Advocacy over his compensation that contributed to the case lying dormant for more than seven years. During that time, no one — not the prosecution, not the defense, not the court — made any effort to move the case forward.
A drawn-out legal battle over funding for the defense to hire expert witnesses.
A relatively new avenue of appeal resulting from a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred the execution of mentally retarded defendants.
Despite the unusually slow progress of his case, its conclusion appears to be years away — with several avenues of appeal still left for White to exhaust.
Death-penalty cases are “terribly complex,” involving an array of necessary safeguards designed to protect innocent people from being executed, former Kentucky Supreme Court Chief Justice Joseph Lambert said in a recent interview. But Lambert also conceded: “It's difficult if not impossible to defend 29 years for a case to be in the courts.”
Kentucky is spending millions of dollars each year on a capital-punishment system so ineffective that more death-row inmates are dying of natural causes than are being executed.Related, and cited by the LCJ, is this Oct. 20, 2009 report of the national Death Penalty Information Center, titled "Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis."Since the death penalty was reinstated nationwide in 1976, Kentucky's trial courts have sentenced 92 defendants to death. Only three have been executed, compared to the five inmates who have died while their cases were being appealed.
In fact, because of Kentucky's ponderous system, more than one-third of the state's 36 current death-row inmates — 13 in all — have been there at least two decades. That's a higher percentage than in every other state except Tennessee, Nevada and Idaho, according to an analysis of information compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
In addition, 30 other inmates whom Kentucky circuit judges sent to death row over the past 33 years ultimately have seen their sentences reduced as the result of appeals, suggesting widespread flaws at the trial level.
The state Department of Public Advocacy estimates that Kentucky spends as much as $8million a year prosecuting, defending and incarcerating death-row inmates, even as state-ordered budget cuts impair other aspects of the judicial branch of government.
Critics of the capital-punishment system question whether Kentucky can afford to litigate death-penalty cases that drag on interminably and rarely end with an execution, especially when convicted murderers can be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. * * *
“The death penalty has a symbolic meaning beyond reason in this society,” said Ed Monahan, the state's public advocate. “Usually, the facts in the case are very difficult, and widely publicized, especially in rural communities. Elected officials have the weight of the community on them. … That weight means pressure to pursue the ultimate penalty.”
Despite the many shortcomings in the state's system of capital punishment, there has been little political sentiment in Kentucky to address them — as other state's have done. The governor's office and legislative leaders have been careful to criticize the delays without questioning the value of capital punishment itself, which remains relatively popular with the public. * * *
David Sexton, who formerly prosecuted death-penalty appeals for the state Attorney General's office, said it is inappropriate to apply a cost-benefit analysis to crimes that may be “too reprehensible … to reduce the equation to some sort of business decision.”
Sexton, now an assistant Jefferson County attorney, also said that while the deterrent factor of executions is debatable, he believes that they provide “an outlet for society to express its moral outrage to certain crimes. The only way we can express (it) is through the ultimate penalty.”
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 8, 2009 05:52 PM
Posted to Courts in general