Death penalty focus of Paducah hearing http://paducahsun.com/PrintPage/072714_PS_death-penalty
Death penalty focus of Paducah hearing
By BY LAUREN P. DUNCANIduncan@paducahsun.com
The question of whether Kentucky should enforce the death penalty will be debated at a meeting
Friday in Paducah.
The General Assembly's Interim Committee on Judiciary will meet at Western Kentucky Community
and Technical College. The meeting,
which is open to the public, will include testimony from individuals dealing with the legislative,
enforcement and victim
sides of the death penalty.
According to Todd Henson, public information officer with the Kentucky Department of Corrections,
33 inmates in Kentucky are
currently on death row. The lone female inmate is housed at the Kentucky Correctional Institute for
Women in Pewee Valley,
and the 32 male inmates are housed at a separate facility for death row inmates at the Kentucky State
Penitentiary at Eddyville.
All 33 inmates have been convicted of murder.
Executions in Kentucky have been halted since 2010, when Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd
issued an injunction against
them over the question of whether the state's lethal injection protocol is constitutional.
The debate on the death penalty has led to decisions in 18 states to abolish the death sentence.
Recently, the practice of
execution has been scrutinized as botched executions have occurred, most recently last Wednesday in
Arizona where an inmate
was pronounced dead one hour and 57 minutes after he was injected.
Friday's hearing in Paducah will not center around religious or philosophical arguments over the death
penalty, but whether
it judicially should be permitted, according to the Rev. Patrick Delahanty, chairman of the Kentucky
Coalition to Abolish
the Death Penalty (KCADP).
Delahanty has been working to abolish the death penalty in Kentucky since the 1970s. Since then, he
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said he's seen a growing
trend of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted, while there's also been a decrease in
individuals given death sentences.
"That doesn't mean there hasn't been some horrendous murders since then ... but juries have been
refusing to give them the
death penalty," he said.
KCADP advocates for life sentences without parole as opposed to the death penalty.
"We risk executing the innocent by having the death penalty in place," he said.
A 2011 report by the American Bar Association states that it was the association's assessment team's
"unanimous view that,
as long as Kentucky imposes the death penalty, it must be reserved for the worst offenders and
offenses, ensure heightened
due process and minimize risk of executing the innocent."
The study then cited alleged flaws in Kentucky's judicial system that do not guard against wrongful
convictions, such as the
ability to destroy evidence after an inmate has been incarcerated and the lack of uniform policies
across the state regarding
eyewitness identifications and interrogations.
Delahanty said the likelihood of a wrongful conviction isn't widely understood by the public.
"We're trying to educate people," Delahanty said. "They're not aware of the flaws; they think our
system works."
Rep. Gerald Watkins, D-Paducah, who supports the death penalty, is on the interim judiciary
committee that will be hearing
testimony Friday. When Watkins was 19 years old in Paducah, one of his neighbors brutally murdered
three other neighbors.
That experience is one reason he supports the death penalty.
"I'd say I'm a very strong supporter of the death penalty," he said. "I don't have a problem with
selecting any number of
execution methods."
He would like to see some changes judicially, though, such as an expansion of DNA testing to support
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convictions. Watkins
said the substitute of life without parole isn't a guarantee that convicted individuals will be in prison
for life.
Watkins said he's made some 60 visits to the Eddyville prison where death row inmates are housed.
"I wouldn't want to get my mail delivered there, but I would say it's not that bad of an existence," he
said. "To me, when
someone commits that heinous of a crime, they don't deserve the life in prison."
Watkins said he expects to hear a lot of interesting commentary at the hearing. While the committee
will not be taking any
action, he said its co-chairman, Rep. John Tilley, D-Hopkinsville, will likely only move forward with
looking at the death
penalty if there is a lot of support against it.
"I think that (Tilley) is holding the hearing to see what kind of support or lack of support there is for
continuing the death
penalty, or if we do decide to continue it, do we want to find a different kind of mode to carry out the
process? It's getting
a lot of attention nationally," Watkins said.
Friday's hearing is set to include testimony from an addiction recovery program representative; Sen.
Gerald Neal and Rep.
David Floyd; an update on execution status and cost from Secretary J. Michael Brown of the
Kentucky Justice and Public Safety
Cabinet; and faith-based perspective on capital punishment from the Rev. Dr. Marian Taylor of the
Kentucky Council of Churches
and Dr. Adam Greenway, dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism and Ministry.
Also speaking will be Delahanty and Ben Griffith of KCADP on crime victim perspectives, and
Katherine Nichols of the Kentuckiana
Voice for Crime Victims; legal perspective from Ed Monahan, Ernie Lewis and Hon. G. L. Ovey; and
discussion about executions
and institutional stress from Dr. Allen Ault, dean of criminal justice studies at Eastern Kentucky
University who formerly
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Death penalty focus of Paducah hearing http://paducahsun.com/PrintPage/072714_PS_death-penalty
was the warden of a Georgia maximum security prison that enforced executions.
The hearing will begin at 10 a.m. Friday at the WKCTC Emergency Technology Center.
Contact Lauren Duncan, Paducah Sun staff writer, at 270-575-8692 or follow @laurenpduncan on
Twitter.
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