Subject: Re: Google Alert - Kentucky death penalty
From: — Mayse, Jim (mayse@messenger-inquirer.com)
To: delahantyp@bellsouth.net;
Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2016 2:26 PM
Here’s the story.
Survey finds majority supports life in prison over death penalty
* By James Mayse Messenger-Inquirer
* 1 hrs ago
a)
‘A survey conducted by the University of Kentucky has found increased support for alternatives to the death penalty, with a majority of those surveyed favoring life in
prison either without parole or with a long mandatory sentence before becoming eligible for parole.
The survey was conducted in March and April by UK's Survey Research Center. The survey involved random calls to landline and cellphone users and yielded 684
responses, giving the survey a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent.
The questions about the death penalty were part of a larger survey on a variety of issues, such as the economy. Ronald Langley, the center's director, said the results are
representative of the opinions of the state's population.
If you did a similar survey with 100 different random samplings, 95 times out of 100 (the results) would be within the 3.8 percent," Langley said.
Kentucky currently is under a 2010 court order that halted all executions. In 2011, the American Bar Association released the results of a two-year study on the death
penalty in Kentucky; of 78 death penalty convictions studied by the ABA task force, 50 were later overturned on appeal or commuted. The task force found "substantial"
shortcomings in how the death penalty is prosecuted, defended and implemented.
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.
In all, 57.9 percent favored a sentence other than death, while 42.2 percent supported the death penalty, the survey found. Meanwhile, 72.4 percent of respondents said
they would support an order by the governor to halt executions until the problems identified in the ABA report -- such as heavy public defender caseloads and the lack of
a requirement that evidence in death penalty cases be preserved after a person is convicted -- were addressed.
Gennaro Vito, chairman of the department of criminal justice at the University of Louisville, said the survey was different from others that simply ask if the respondent
supports or opposes the death penalty.
"IE you ask people, even people who support the death penalty, if they'd go for life without parole, they go for life without parole," Vito said.
"Even though we have this moratorium (on executions), death cases continue to be tried," said the Rev. Patrick Delahanty, chairman of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish
the Death Penalty. Since 2008, three people were sentenced to death in the state, although one of the those sentences was immediately overturned, Delahanty said.
Meanwhile, there were death penalty-eligible cases where the death penalty was not pursued.
I think that reflects what the poll is telling us," Delahanty said. "... They say the most appropriate penalty is lengthy prison time, and yet the state is still bearing the cost
of those prosecutions to go forward.
"We're getting a very expensive way of putting people in prison for life (while their death sentences are appealed) when we don't have to do it that way," Delahanty said.
Ed Monahan, chief advocate for the state Department of Public Advocacy, estimated the agency spends from $3 million to $4 million annually on death penalty appeals.
"We believe prosecutors would spend a similar amount, and the courts spend about $1 million a year" on death penalty appeals, Monahan said.
Terry Sebastian, communications director for Attorney General Andy Beshear, said there's no way to calculate the cost the agency incurs in handling death penalty
challenges.
"The attorney general is a strong proponent of the death penalty," Sebastian said in an email. "The AG's Office of Criminal Appeals represents the commonwealth of
Kentucky in defending felony convictions, including those in which the death penalty has been imposed, when those convictions are attacked in state or federal court.
While initial felony prosecutions are handled by the local commonwealth's attorneys, under Kentucky law, Criminal Appeals is charged with preparing briefs and
presenting arguments in front of any state or federal court hearing a challenge to a felony conviction.
