KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
What policy goal is your campaign or organization trying to achieve and by when?
Our primary goal is the repeal of the death penalty in 2016. Political and public trends in the state and in the nation,
2006 polling results showing 67% of Kentuckians prefer a sentence other than death, and 2011 polling results
indicating 62% of Kentuckians support a moratorium now suggest this is a realistic, viable timeframe.
Our short term goal is to escalate activities that raise awareness of the death penalty as a failed and harmful policy
and shift the public and political climate closer to repeal. These activities will also provide critical information
needed to refine strategies and adjust timelines as necessary and set the stage for a full scale, multi-faceted repeal
campaign, which will need to be up and running by 2014 in order to win repeal by 2016. Activities will focus on
educating the general public and lawmakers about the human and financial costs and risks of the death penalty and
debunking the myth that murder victims’ families and friends need it.
We will also leverage calls for reform to build support for repeal. KCADP’s past successful reform campaigns —
1992, excluding mentally disabled from death and 1998, the Kentucky Racial Justice Act — helped build capacity and
shift public opinion by loosening the state’s connection to the death penalty and motivating more Kentuckians to get
involved on the issue. These reform campaigns also moved lawmakers by showing them that they can do the right
thing on the death penalty without political consequences. For these same reasons and depending on the outcome of
an upcoming strategy meeting, we are likely to continue to support from behind the scenes NAMI’s work to pass
legislation in 2013 that would prohibit the use of the death penalty for the seriously mentally ill.
For what work do you seek funding?
We seek funding for the following: salary for a campaign coordinator to implement the repeal effort; speaker and
other fees involved with bringing Witness to Innocence, Journey of Hope, and other speakers to Kentucky; event
fees for the Kentucky State Fair and a host of other Kentucky festivals that attract large crowds; in-state travel
associated with events; preparation of fact sheets and training materials; annual fees for the Public News Service,
website, and Constant Contact; and polling to determine Kentuckians’ current opinion about 1) repeal when offered
other options, and 2) the degree to which a candidate’s vote on the death penalty impacts voter decisions. The last
poll, December 2006, is 6 years old; it did not poll for voter’s decisions, an area of interest for candidates, and we
need to know Kentuckians current thought on repeal.
Full-time staff will work with the KCADP board and volunteers and with staff and volunteers of other organizations
to carry out the grant activities, which will also be supported by our ongoing fundraising activities.’ We will continue
to partner with faith groups such as the Kentucky Council of Churches and the Catholic Conference and with the
ACLU, NCAAP, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, local colleges, and other community and justice organizations
to conduct strategic public education, outreach and advocacy. Public education events featuring speakers such as
victims’ families and exonorees have proven effective in enlisting new members and building our capacity. They also
provide local media opportunities to bring our messages to larger audiences. For example, four women who lost
family members to murder made YouTube videos for our channel and three separate articles about them were front
page in The Record, the largest Catholic weekly in the state. Full-time staff will allow us to do more of this work; it
will also allow us to target key constituencies such as victims’ families and law enforcement for strategic outreach
and organizing.
The staff position we seek will also allow us to implement a critical advocacy task for the coming year: to organize
10 or 12 teams of two people each, who may at times be joined by a third person, to visit with each of our 138
legislators. In these visits legislators will hear from victims’ family members and other stakeholders, constituents,
and local experts on the death penalty. The discussion will be tailored for each lawmaker based on careful research
and analysis. Staff will be involved in scheduling the meetings, training the teams, matching the right team with a
‘ Our fundraising work has become more challenging as a result of the death of our top fundraiser. As we further develop our strat-
egy, we will incorporate into it a new plan for fundraising.
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
legislator, and recording feedback for each meeting. Staff will also track legislation limiting the use of the death
penalty, keep KCADP members informed of important developments, issue action alerts as needed and appropriate,
and oversee key volunteers, including one who maintains our website, FB page, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and
blogs the entries for the website and another who maintains the emailing lists, eNews, occasional print newsletter,
and mailing list. All of these activities will be tightly focused on supporting our strategy for repeal. To ensure we are
on the right strategic course to achieve repeal, in June we will participate in a high-level KY based meeting of key
state and national abolition leaders, including media consultants, polling experts, and staff with NCADP. The
purpose of the meeting is to further develop our strategy for repeal and to further consider how the mental illness bill
and the recent ABA Kentucky Death Penalty Report can move us closer to that goal.
Are you seeking to maintain your capacity at this time or to expand it? If expansion, please explain.
Two small grants of $15,000 and $11,000 paid for a number of public education events and strategic organizing and
communications activities, including several visits by Witness to Innocence and one visit by Journey of Hope,
tabling at the State Fair,, a special program for African-American high school students that we organized alongside
the ACLU, and our strategic communications functions such as the Public News Service.. Whatever way our strategy
evolves as a result of the June strategy meeting and because of a changing environment for our work that puts repeal
seriously in reach, we must increase staff capacity now to take our climate shifting activities to the next level,
especially in areas of the state that are less populated but important strategically, add the critical legislator meetings
to our mix of advocacy activities, and set the stage for a full scale repeal campaign.
What is the external political landscape in your state? Include both political openings that make your goal
more winnable and political roadblocks that could impede your effort.
The political and legal landscape in Kentucky is one that talks tough on capital punishment, but seldom uses it.
Prosecutors seldom seek the death penalty, juries don't seem to like it and public officials seldom carry it out. There
have been four executions in fifty years and two of those inmates dropped their appeals and asked to be executed.
The last governmental study on the death penalty completed in 1966 recommended abolition and while not adopted
by the General Assembly, there were no executions for the next thirty one years.
Jurors’ behavior seems to verify the accuracy of polling data that reveal that Kentuckians prefer alternatives to death
sentences and support a moratorium on executions because of deficiencies and flaws in the system. Since January
2010, no jury has recommended death. This includes four death cases involving the murder and/or abuse of at least
10 children which resulted in lesser sentences.
National trends and state developments affect the climate for repeal in Kentucky. Local developments include the
exoneration of twelve individuals who were wrongly convicted of serious crimes such as rape and murder. Though
these are not persons set free from death row, some did face a capital trial with death as an option and all of the cases
illustrate the risk of error in our criminal justice system. Some of these exonorees, such as Michael VonAllmen, want
to work with KCADP to share their stories. There has also been an increase in attention to murder victims’ family
members who oppose the death penalty, in part as a result of the release of a study by the University of Louisville
that focuses on victims’ family members and closure (See our blogpost about it, http://bit.ly/UofLStudyonVictims)
and in part due to our strategic communications work.
On the political end, the legislative body of 100 House members and 38 Senators is not yet ready to abolish the death
penalty, but legislative action this session demonstrates a willingness to explore the idea. For more than twenty
years, this body has not passed legislation to expand its use, although bills were introduced to do so on many
occasions.
The 2011 issuing of a report by the ABA that was highly critical of the death penalty pushed the issue back into the
public policy arena and provided our repeal campaign was significant new information to leverage in our advocacy
efforts . The ABA assessment team, which included attorneys, former state Supreme Court justices and law school
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
professors, recommended that the Commonwealth suspend executions until serious issues identified in the Report
are remedied. The Report found a number of troubling areas including a high reversal rate of death sentences (fifty
of seventy eight death sentenced defendants); public defender caseloads that far exceed national averages; no
mechanism in place to guide prosecutors in deciding what charges to bring; and inadequate protections to ensure that
death sentences are not imposed or carried out on a defendant with mental retardation or illness. The Governor, who
did not respond to the idea of a task force, said his office would “carefully review and study” the ABA Report and
noted that a suspension of executions is already in place in Kentucky due to lethal injection litigation. In the
Legislature, the introduction of two resolutions — one in the House to create a task force to develop a plan to
implement the recommendations of the ABA Report and another in the Senate to study the costs of using the death
penalty - were the result of its publication. Though neither passed, the House resolution received a hearing in the
House Judiciary Committee, after a prior hearing at which House members were briefed on the ABA Report. It also
received a successful House floor vote before it died in the Senate Judiciary committee after a hearing. The Senate
resolution received a hearing, but no vote in the Senate Judiciary committee.
Also last year Senator Gerald Neal sponsored SB 63 to repeal the death penalty. This same Senator was the sponsor
of the Kentucky Racial Justice Act, which took four sessions to pass before becoming law in 1998. Senator Neal
arranged with the Senate Judiciary chair for an informational hearing on SB 63 and invited Dick Dieter, Jordan
Streiker and Professor Michael Mannheimer (co-chair of the ABA KY Assessment Team) to present testimony for
more than an hour. This was the first hearing granted a repeal bill since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Recent conversations with legislators provide additional insight into the political climate. Senate president David
Williams has told Catholic bishops and the Catholic Conference of Kentucky executive director that his position is
shifting away from death penalty and he would not block a death penalty bill. State Senator Ray Jones, a former
prosecutor who has publicly supported the death penalty, told the CCK exec. dir. that he is moving toward repeal.
The Senate Judiciary chair told Senator Neal and others that he still supports the death penalty in principle but now
thinks it should be repealed due to cost and the difficulty it would take to repair its broken state. Still, it has been
difficult to pass a bill to exclude the severely mentally ill from execution, which signals that our legislative road
ahead is challenging. The House Judiciary chairman claims he supports it and speaks about his mentally ill aunt but
he is listening closely to the Commonwealth Attorneys association, which publicly testified against the mental illness
exemption in 2011. They have a friend in Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, a strong death penalty believer who
has blocked the mental illness bill. Any strategy we develop must include bringing more public pressure on
prosecutors to neutralize their lobbying and give legislators cover to oppose them; it must also consider all of the key
legislative leaders.
The current governor and attorney general are one year into new terms and cannot run for these offices again, though
they can for other offices. It is generally known that they support the death penalty. Governor Beshear has signed
death warrants; Attorney General Conway pushes hard for these signatures. How strongly the governor supports the
death penalty should become clearer in the next 3 months. A circuit judge has just ruled that the state has 90 days to
revise its protocol (which has been on hold for two years due to a challenge of the 3-drug cocktail) to allow for the
use of one drug or go to trial on the use of the three drug protocol. In addition the court ordered the state to include
measures in the protocol to explain how it protects the mentally ill and disabled from an unconstitutional execution.
