KY should reduce the error, waste, abuse with commonsense reforms of KY’s costly death penalty process or eliminate the penalty

Kentucky has an expensive and time-consuming process of prosecuting many death eligible cases as capital cases but almost all cases end with a life or life without parole sentence. And the 35 year error rate for the few cases that result in a death sentence is 67%.

A 2011 Kentucky Audit by the ABA KY Assessment Team uncovered major deficiencies in the way the death penalty has been implemented in Kentucky since 1976. The Audit evaluated Kentucky procedures and practices against national ABA capital benchmark protocols and made 93 Recommendations in the following areas:

ABA Number of Recommendations Per Chapter
Chapter	Title	Recommendations
2	Collection, Preservation & Testing of DNA and Other Types of Evidence	4
3	Law Enforcement Identifications and Interrogations	9
4	Crime Laboratories and Medical Examiner Offices	2
5	Prosecutorial Professionalism	6
6	Defense Services	5
7	The Direct Appeal Process	1
8	State Post-Conviction Proceedings	12
9	Clemency	11
10	Capital Jury Instructions	7
11	Judicial Independence	6
12	Racial and Ethnic Minorities	10
13	Mental Retardation, Mental Illness, and the Death Penalty	20
Total Recommendations		93

Senator Robin Webb’s Senate Bill 190 implements many of the important reforms recommended by the ABA KY Assessment Audit in an effort to ensure the system works. The reforms in SB 190:

1. Create minimum standards for eyewitness identification procedures to eliminate mistaken or false identifications
2. Direct that interviews of suspects be recorded so courts and juries receive accurate and reliable information about a defendant’s statement
3. Prohibit the execution of a person with a severe mental illness
4. Assure the independence and proficiency of the state crime lab
5. Require ongoing training and competency on death penalty issues for law enforcement, public defenders, prosecutors, corrections officers, and judges
6. Create a statewide database for reliable ongoing information relating to capital cases
7. Mandate the Department of Public Advocacy to enforce standards for death penalty cases to be handled by trained competent defense attorneys

The time is now to fix the KY death process or eliminate it.  There are some people who should be imprisoned for the rest of their life. Life without parole meets all appropriate needs of our society.

Contributed by Ed Monahan