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 three to six years. Political, public, and usage 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 to set the stage for a full scale, multi-faceted repeal
campaign, which will need to be up and running by 2014 in order to meet our target timeframe for repeal:
Plan A: to win repeal by 2015, under the current Governor, who is term limited and will leave office in January
2016.
Plan B: to win repeal under the term of a new Governor.
This refinement of the timeline is a result of discussions during a recent strategy meeting held in Louisville on June
15 and 16, which included local public relations experts, lobbyists, victims’ family members, representatives from
the KY ACLU, the Catholic Conference of Kentucky, the Kentucky Council of Churches, Kentuckians for the
Commonwealth, and national partners such as NCADP. Celeste Fitzgerald, now with the Proteus Action League,
was present to offer her perspective as someone who led a successful campaign resulting in abolition in New Jersey.
Our strategy includes leveraging recent 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. Participants in the June meeting agreed
that KCADP will focus on repeal; they also agreed that if in the upcoming session our partners at NAMI, who are
currently juggling multiple pressing issues, are able to gain traction on pending legislation to preclude executions of
the seriously mentally ill, KCADP will adjust time and resources to assist this effort. This would mean continuing or
possibly increasing our public pressure for repeal, while quietly and behind the scenes helping to direct a legislative
push for the MI bill, e.g., by arranging witnesses for legislative hearings and generating grassroots support for the
bill. Under the scenario of a viable MI bill in 2013, in our meetings with legislators we will frame support for the
MI bill as a step in the right direction, while at the same time being very clear that our organization intends to keep
the pressure on for repeal. It is important to note that any favorable vote for the MI bill, whether in committee or on
the floor, would provide an opportunity to launch a thank you campaign to allow legislators who voted the right way
to see the depth of grassroots and grasstops support for repeal.
For what work do you seek funding?
Focus: Strategic Organizing and Communications
Success requires a strong base of diverse support for repeal. Toward this end, in 2013, KCADP will strengthen our
partnership with active allies such as the Kentucky Council of Churches, the Catholic Conference, the ACLU,
NAACP, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, local colleges, faith groups and other community and justice
organizations, while also building relationships with additional state and local organizations. Strategic activities will
focus on public education, outreach and advocacy. We will conduct public education events featuring victims’
families’ members and exonorees that will be utilized to enlist new members and build our base of support. And we
will conduct targeted outreach aimed at engaging with victims’ family members and law enforcement, two
constituencies that are needed to deliver core messages for repeal. All of these relationships will serve our strategic
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
advocacy efforts, including targeted action alerts, hearings, and meetings with individual legislators.
As we carry out these organizing activities we will look for media opportunities to bring our repeal message to larger
audiences, building on our successful efforts of the past year. For example, last year 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. The impact of this kind of local media can’t be overstated.
Every event, every hearing, and every development presents an opportunity to advance our repeal messages, whether
through an article in a local paper or through a letter to the editor. With each event, we will assess how the media
can increase our impact.
Focus: Legislative Research, Analysis, Education, and Advocacy
In the June strategy meeting, we agreed on the need to begin conducting individual interviews with each member of
the General Assembly, 138 in all. Targeted for special attention are the Governor, Senate and House leaders, and the
chairpersons of the two Judiciary committees. The work to prioritize and prepare for these visits has begun and will
continue after the upcoming election in November, which is expected to bring many changes to the House and
Senate. Strategically selected constituents, victims’ family members, campaign contributors, and others will be
identified to participate in these meetings, the purposes of which are to make sure each legislator is familiar with the
results of the recent ABA Kentucky report (described below), which identified numerous problems with the death
penalty; to ensure that legislators hear the reasons why repeal is in the best interest of Kentucky; and to assess which
lawmakers are inclined to vote for repeal of the death penalty and which present the best opportunities to increase
support. Responses will be carefully tracked and will provide the basis for continued refinement of our strategy.
Honing our list of targets in the legislature will also allow us to further target our local organizing and media work.
Are you seeking to maintain your capacity at this time or to expand it? If expansion, please explain.
Additional staff is necessary to put repeal seriously in reach and to set the stage for a full scale repeal campaign.
With two small grants of $15,000 and $11,000 in 2012, KCADP paid for a number of public education events and
strategic organizing and communications activities, including two 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 with the ACLU, and two pastoral leadership trainings. Nonetheless, Kentuckians living in key geographic
areas of the state have yet to be reached by these efforts. 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.
We must also add the critical legislator meetings to our mix of advocacy activities. While the work to begin planning
for, and prioritizing, legislator meetings has begun, we will not be able to coordinate at the level necessary for
optimal results, nor meet with as many legislators, without additional resources.
Full-time staff, assisted by the current part-time administrative assistant, will work with KCADP board and
volunteers and with staff and volunteers of other organizations to implement grant activities, which will also be
supported by our ongoing fundraising activities.' For 2012 and 2013 we seek funding for the following: to hire a
campaign director and to increase the current administrative assistant’s hours from 10 to 20 per week; fees associated
with speaking events featuring Witness to Innocence, Journey of Hope, and others; event fees for the Kentucky State
Fair and other Kentucky festivals that attract large crowds; in-state travel associated with events; preparation of fact
sheets and training materials; and annual fees for the Public News Service to gain added media exposure in less
urban areas of the state through radio and local newspapers, our website to reach the general public, and Constant
Contact to communicate regularly with KCADP individual members and others who signed up to receive the
‘ Our fundraising work has become more challenging as a result of the death of our top fundraiser. As we further develop our strategy,
we will incorporate into it a new plan for fundraising. Already in the works is a fundraiser to mark KCADP’s twenty-fifth anniversary.
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
eNewsletter.
A campaign director is needed to keep all aspects of the campaign on track and running smoothly. In addition to
overseeing all organizing and media work, the director will organize and prepare the plan for legislator meetings.
That plan includes tailoring each legislator meeting based on careful research and analysis, which will be done in
coordination with the KCADP board’s lobbyists and other members; prepping meeting participants; ensuring proper
follow up, including thank you letters; and recording feedback for each meeting. The director will also track
legislation related to 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 a volunteer 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.
Increased hours for our current part time staff will allow us to do more of the organizing work that is critical to
success; it will also allow us to target key constituencies such as victims’ families and law enforcement for strategic
outreach and organizing. However it should be noted that by 2014 when we move to a full scale campaign, we will
need to add field organizers to our staff in order to take this work to the next level.
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 Landscape for Repeal: Moving from Ambivalence to Awareness
Kentucky is a state that talks tough on capital punishment, but seldom uses it. Prosecutors, even though elected,
seldom seek the death penalty, juries rarely recommend it, and public officials seldom carry it out. Kentucky also
has an excellent public defender’s office with high standards for capital representation. The result of all this has
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 reveals that 67% Kentuckians prefer alternatives to
death sentences and 62% 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 sentences other than death. Other recent local developments include the
exoneration of twelve individuals who were wrongly convicted of serious crimes such as rape and murder and
increased 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/UofLStudyon Victims) and in part due to our strategic communications work.
The high number of life sentences in death penalty cases is causing some consternation about waste, including
among some judges, and along with the recent exonerations present an opportunity to proactively frame the system
as ineffective and irreparably broken and to ensure that a critical mass of citizens are talking about the death penalty
as a “problem” that can’t be solved.
A 2011 report by the ABA that was highly critical of the death penalty pushed the issue back into the public policy
arena and provides our repeal campaign with significant new information to leverage in our education and advocacy
efforts. The ABA assessment team, which included attorneys, former state Supreme Court justices and law school
professors, recommended a suspension of 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
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
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.
Both the ABA report and the national momentum toward repeal have received media attention here and unlike some
other states, Kentucky responds to national trends and pressure. We still have work to do to move some media
outlets to acknowledge the death penalty’s problems but key outlets such as the Courier-Journal, which supports
repeal, and the Lexington Herald Leader, which supports a moratorium, provide a good base for reaching larger
audiences with our messages.
On the legal front, a number of death row inmates are nearing the end of their appeals. However a circuit court has
ordered the state to promulgate a new execution protocol by July 26, 2012 that uses one drug and to have in place a
procedure to ensure that mentally disabled and/or mentally ill prisoners are not executed. The State has announced it
will submit a new protocol to address this order. Once submitted the new protocol will require a hearing for
comments from the public and possibly litigation, which may involve KCADP and death penalty attorneys.
Continued litigation would stop executions for a time, providing an execution-free atmosphere in which to advance
repeal, however it is impossible to predict the course of this litigation.
In terms of organized opposition to repeal, there are no active murder victim family members or groups that are
organized in support of the death penalty. However, the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s are a strong organization with
influence in the legislature.
The Political Landscape: Opportunities for Progress
For more than twenty years, the legislative body of 100 House members and 38 Senators has declined to expand the
death penalty even though expansion bills have been introduced on many occasions. While this body is not yet
ready to abolish the death penalty, action in the last legislative session demonstrates a willingness to explore the idea.
The ABA report sparked the introduction of two resolutions in 2012: 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. 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 report. The task force bill also
received a successful House floor vote before dying in the Senate Judiciary committee after a hearing. The Senate
resolution received a hearing without a vote in the Senate Judiciary committee. Meanwhile, 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.
Also last year Senator Gerald Neal sponsored SB 63 to repeal the death penalty. Senator Neal 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, Professor 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. Senator Ray Jones, a former
prosecutor who has publicly supported the death penalty, told the CCK executive director that he is moving toward
' Kentucky has a long tradition of taking multiple sessions to pass important legislation, making these legislative developments all the
more important.
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
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.
Key Political Targets: A Plan of Action
Governor Steve Beshear and Attorney General Conway are both one year into new terms and cannot run for these
offices again, though they can for other offices. They have publicly supported the death penalty: Governor Beshear
has signed death warrants; General Conway pushes hard for these signatures. While we do not anticipate being able
to move General Conway, we believe Governor Beshear is a worthy target because he has not been terribly vocal on
the issue and may be reluctant to carry out an actual execution. He is concerned about his legacy, which may
provide an opening for friends and close associates to press him to refrain from signing death warrants and to sign a
repeal bill when the time come for that action. KCADP and its coalition have high level contacts within the
Governor's circle and are already pursuing this relationship leveraging strategy. In addition, over the next six months
KCADP will be working to make sure Governor Beshear is fully informed about the ABA findings and his various
options regarding signing death warrants or commuting sentences. If our instincts are correct that the right strategies
and messages will convince him to reject the idea of being remembered as the Governor who executed the last six
persons in Kentucky, we will use that opening to move him further before he leaves office in 2015.
Another key target is Senate President David Williams (R). As previously mentioned, Senator Williams has recently
indicated to the Catholic Conference that his opposition to repeal is shifting. Our strategy is to move him to, at
minimum, “stay out the way” and let repeal advance, though his recent comments and his concern for legacy (he
may be nearing the end of his tenure as Senate President) lead us to believe that with the right strategy he may be
willing to take a leadership position on repeal. His wife is considering a race for Attorney General in 2015,
potential development that will need to be considered carefully. As with the Governor, our strategy for the Senate
President focuses on identifying close confidants who can deliver carefully developed messages.
The chief political roadblock to repeal is Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo (D). Experience has shown us that he is
not open to any cogent argument about the death penalty. However, while the Speaker does not support repeal, he
has historically let bills go through if a majority of his caucus supports them. Thus, our strategy is multifold: to
conduct the legislator interviews described above to identify members of his caucus who support or are open to
repeal; to educate them as to the problems with the death penalty and the benefits of repeal; to demonstrate to them
the strong public support for repeal; and to generate energy and excitement among caucus members for repeal. Our
task is to make repeal inevitable and for him to feel it is in his best interest to go along with it.
In the June strategy meeting, KCADP drilled down on these and other legislative targets, identifying what they need
to hear and who needs to tell it to them. Since many key targets were in the legislature when the current death
penalty law was adopted, a key tactic will be to lift up all that we have learned about the death penalty since that
time. And because a shifting statewide political landscape and Senate elections in November 2012 could lead to
changes in legislative leadership (for better or for worse), we are evaluating and targeting all possible future leaders.
All of this work will need to move very quickly if we are to achieve “Plan A” of repeal under Governor Beshear. At
the same time, we must create a repeal friendly atmosphere surrounding our advocacy. KCADP has already begun to
organize messengers, including former prosecutors and other law enforcement personnel, victims’ family members,
progressive Democrats, and constituents, as well as local media, but much more climate shifting work needs to be
done. Increased capacity to get our messages to a larger audience is the next step toward creating the repeal friendly
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KENTUCKY COALITION TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY LETTER OF INQUIRY
climate that will ultimately move all targets.
EVALUATING SUCCESS:
The primary purpose of this grant request is to put staff in place to increase our ability to create a climate of repeal.
Success will mean that the activities described above will take place. In other words, by this time next year: 1) we
will have a much better picture of where legislators and the Governor stand on repeal; and 2) we will have begun to
see measurable shifts in the climate for repeal as a result of increased organizing and media activities. Success in
shifting the climate means much more than merely additional presentations. It means significantly increasing the
numbers of supporters in our database and the numbers of victims’ families and law enforcement available to help us
deliver our messages and significantly increasing our presence in the media, including social media. Additionally,
staff will arrange for several fundraising events throughout the year. In terms of the legislative visits, staff will have
a list of legislators willing to support repeal, a list of those undecided and willing to hear more, and a list of those
unlikely to be moved. With this information, staff will be able to fine tune the ongoing messages necessary to keep
supporters in the fold. Staff can then target districts represented by the undecided, but open, members for increased
use of local media and outreach to their constituents to urge their contact with legislators, especially any whom the
legislator may have identified as important to him or her. Events with victims’ family members and exonerees can
be scheduled in districts represented by the undecided and a special effort made to get them to attend.
