By James Mayse
The Messenger-Inquirer
A Daviess County Circuit Court judge and former prosecutor told an audience at Brescia
University on Monday that Kentucky should abolish the death penalty.
Daviess Circuit Judge Jay Wethington, who was commonwealth's attorney for Daviess County
before becoming a Circuit Court judge, spoke Monday at part of Brescia's Constitution Day
commemoration.
Wethington told the student audience that the death penalty creates tremendous problems for
prosecutors who are required by state law to seek the death penalty if they want the jury to
consider the alternative punishment of life in prison without parole.
Seeking the death penalty "is risky for prosecutors," Wethington said. "Once you start that train
rolling (with juries), it's hard to stop."
The problem, Wethington said, lies with the laws governing capital cases. In Kentucky, a person
convicted of murder can be sentenced to life in prison with the understanding of becoming
eligible for parole after 20 years, or can be given the specific sentence of life with no chance of
parole until at least 25 years in prison have been served.
A person can only receive a sentence of life without parole in Kentucky in cases where the jury
also considers the death penalty, Wethington said.
The state's system is "a nightmare," Wethington said. Prosecutors "can't get life without parole
unless (they) seek death.
"I've tried death penalty cases," Wethington said. "Most prosecutors don't want to file for death.
Death increases a prosecutor's workload 100 times," and also creates additional work for the
court system, he said.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Public Advocacy -- which runs the public defender system --
has a branch devoted solely to defending death penalty cases, Wethington said.
The death penalty "is impractical, it's expensive and prosecutors don't want to use it -- but they
are forced to if they want to get life without parole," Wethington said.
Seeking the death penalty is generally a "three-year process" for prosecutors, which equates to
"justice delayed" for the families of victims, he said.
A recent survey by the University of Kentucky found increased public support for alternatives to
the death penalty among state residents.
The survey asked what people thought was the most appropriate punishment for people
convicted of first-degree murder in Kentucky and gave respondents several choices. More than
half chose options other than the death penalty -- 35.4 percent preferred life in prison with no
possibility of parole; 7.4 percent supported life with no chance for parole before a person serves
25 years in prison; 2.1 percent supported life without parole eligibility for 20 years; and 13
percent supported a sentence of between 20 and 50 years in prison, on the condition that the
person serve at least 85 percent of the sentence.
With Gov. Matt's Bevin's task force currently studying ways to change the state's penal code, the
possibility exists for abolishing the death penalty in Kentucky, Wethington said. The state is
currently under a court-ordered moratorium on executions.
"If there ever was a time to give prosecutors a tool for life without parole, it's this year,"
Wethington said.
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