Talking Point #1 The Arithmetic of the Death Penalty Doesn’t Add Up
Since 1956, Kentucky has carried out 4 executions and recorded over 13,000 murders. A death penalty
system that executes 4 murders out of 13,000 cases in a 55 year period is
Too risky
Too costly
Unfair and
Unnecessary
when other equally retributive penalties like life in prison without parole are available to protect the
public and punish heinous crimes.
Talking Point #2: A Majority of Kentuckians Don’t Support the Death Penalty
When Presented with an Option for Life Sentence Without Parole
¢ A 2010 poll by Lake Research found 61% of the country’s voters would choose a punishment
other than the death penalty for murder, including life in prison without parole with restitution
to the victim’s family (39%), life with no possibility of parole
(13%) or life with the possibility of parole (9%).
¢ A 2006 University of Kentucky opinion poll showed 67% of 836 randomly sampled Kentuckians
over age 18 favored a penalty other than death for aggravated murder.
Talking Point #3: Risk
The Larry Osborne and Edwin Chandler cases illustrate the risk of executing an
innocent person.
The Larry Osborne Case
By Deborah Yetter
The Courier-Journal
August 1, 2002
Larry Osborne -- the youngest person on Kentucky's death row -- was acquitted
yesterday at his retrial in the December 1997 murders of an elderly Whitley County
couple. He was freed immediately and left the courthouse with his father.
Osborne, 22, whose 1998 conviction was overturned last year by the state Supreme Larry Osborne, 22, was
Court, becomes the first person in Kentucky on death row to be found innocent since “still in shock" after his
the state reinstituted the death penalty in 1976........ acquittal yesterday, his
lawyer said. He spent two
years on death row after
being convicted of the
December 1997 murders
of an elderly Whitley
County couple.
The Edwin Chandler Case
Edwin Chandler was arrested for first degree murder and the state requested the death penalty at his
trial. He was convicted on the basis of a confession he retracted before trial on the grounds it was
coerced. The jury convicted but did not impose the death penalty. He turned out to be an innocent
man. Here is an Associated Press account of his exoneration.
October 14, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Prosecutors are saying a Kentucky man who served about nine years in prison for a shooting death and
robbery is innocent.
Jefferson County Commonwealth's Attorney David Stengel said Tuesday that Edwin A. Chandler was innocent of the 1993
slaying of a convenience store clerk. Another man has been indicted in the killing.
Chandler's attorney, Marguerite Thomas, says a fingerprint on a beer bottle at the scene, along with two witnesses who came
forward, cleared Chandler. Chandler was paroled in 2002.
Stengel offered his apologies, and said he hoped to help him receive restitution from the state.
A judge overturned Chandler's conviction Tuesday afternoon.
Talking Point #4: Unfair
The Edwin Chandler and Larry Osborne cases show how unfair the death penalty system can operate.
But an assessment of heinous crimes committed in Kentucky since 2010 show that it is incorrect to say
that only the worst of the worst get the death penalty. For example, a single child killer rapist, a double
child killer, a triple child killer and a quadruple child killer all got life in prison from either the jury, the
judge or a plea bargain while others with lesser heinous crimes got sentenced to death. How and why
the death penalty is used is impossible to determine without raising suspicious or arbitrary or
discriminatory application.
In process July 25, 2011
Text for Post Card
Please reconsider use of the death penalty in Kentucky in light of its cost, risk, unfairness and the
existence of other adequate retributive remedies like life without parole. Jury sentencing patterns in
Kentucky are telling us the evolving standards of decency has turned against capital punishment and
survivors and families of victims are telling us the death penalty system adds to their angst.
63 words
Text for Petition
Can we use the same text?
STUDIES:
Penalty
Arecent study by Professors Thomas Mowen and Ryan Schroeder of the University of Louisville found
tims' Families React Negatively to Serving as Basis for Death
that public support for the death penalty has shifted away from traditional justifications (such as its
purported deterrent effect, its imagined cost-saving value, and its safeguard of innocent lives), and has
been replaced by rationales of retribution and closure on behalf of victims’ families. According to
the study, which was published in Western Criminology Review, “with this change in justification,
emotional catharsis for the victims' family members has become the goal of the capital punishment
system. This has resulted in the onus of capital punishment being placed on the victim’s family.” The
study found that this change of justifications for the death penalty has produced a backlash against it.
In the two decades following the rise of retribution and closure for victims as primary justification for
the death penalty, there has been a significant increase in opposition to executions from families of
victims. The report stated, “The growing covictim opposition to the execution of the offenders in their
individual cases highlights the resistance of victims’ families to accepting the responsibility for the
state-sanctioned death of the offenders, specifically, and to the notion that the court can provide
closure, more generally.”
Finally, the report found that newspaper coverage of capital cases in which the victims’ family
supported execution of the offender received more words per article and greater exposure than in
cases in which the victims opposed the execution. The report concluded, “the findings [ ] signal that
covictims are increasingly opposed to capital punishment and do not believe the imposition of death
brings closure.”
(T. Mowen and R. Schroeder. "Not In My Name: An Investigation of Victims’ Family Clemenc
Movements and Court Appointed Closure," Western Criminology Review, 2011).
See Victims and Studies.
