As the Kansas Legislature gears up for a debate about ending the death penalty in the state, advocates from the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty are speaking out locally.
Ben Coates, KCADP member and former director of the Kansas Sentencing Commission, addressed about 20 people Sunday at Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt. Coates cited a variety of reasons why he supports a Senate bill that would prohibit executions in Kansas.
“I think it’s purely wrong for the state to be in the business of taking human lives,” Coates said, citing his religious beliefs.
But Coates, who has taught sociology and criminal justice at Washburn University for more than 40 years, said there are also other reasons to abolish the death penalty.
As director of the sentencing commission, Coates worked on studies showing that the Kansas criminal justice system continues to hand out sentences based on factors, such as race and socio-economic status, that have nothing to do with the crime committed. He worries that’s led to unfair use of the death penalty across the state.
“This has the capacity of being arbitrary,” he said.
No one has been executed in Kansas since 1965, and the U.S. Supreme Court suspended state death penalties in 1972.
Since 1994, when Kansas reinstated its death penalty, 25 people have been tried in capital punishment cases. Twelve men have been sentenced to death, but plea agreements were reached during the appeals process in two cases, which resulted in lesser sentences.
There are now 10 convicted murderers facing the death penalty. The bill in the Senate, however, would not affect those already sentenced.
"Bishops support death penalty repeal," by Matthew Clark appeared in the Sunday Pittsburg Morning Sun.
A measure being considered by the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee to repeal the state’s death penalty picked up eight supporters on Friday.
In a letter to the Kansas Legislature, eight bishops of the Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church and United Methodist Church in Kansas signed a letter asking for reconsideration and repeal of the Kansas death penalty.
Signing the letter, dated Jan. 28, were Bishops James M. Adams Jr., Episcopal Diocese of Western Kansas; Paul S. Coakley, Catholic Diocese of Salina; Ronald M. Gilmore, Catholic Diocese of Dodge City; Michael O. Jackels, Catholic Diocese of Wichita; Scott J. Jones, Kansas Area United Methodist Church; Gerald L. Mansholt, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; Joseph F. Naumann, Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City; and Dean Wolfe, Episcopal Diocese of Kansas.
“As bishops leading the Episcopal Church, Roman Catholic Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church and United Methodist Church in Kansas, we write to share our deep concern about the continuing practice of condemning persons to death in Kansas,” the letter said.
Last week the Senate Judiciary Committee opened four days of hearings on the bill.
The Sunday edition of the Morning Sun also carried the OpEd."Wrongful convictions," by George Weeks.
I immediately thought of Ron Williamson after reading Matthew Clark’s editorial on the death penalty in the Jan. 20th Morning Sun. Williamson was a man convicted for the murder of a young woman in Ada, OK, in 1988. He sat on death row for eleven years before he was found to be innocent using DNA evidence and he was released with all charges dismissed.
Since DNA evidence became an accepted method of establishing presence at a crime scene, there have been 249 post-conviction exonerations of serious crimes using DNA, 17 were people convicted of murder. In all cases where there is exoneration, there are errors that lead to a wrongful conviction. It begs the questions, does the death penalty bring about justice or injustice, and does our criminal justice system work fairly?
Williamson’s story is deeply moving, the story of a flawed young man, once a promising minor-league baseball player, who was convicted of a heinous crime he did not commit. The State of Oklahoma came within five days of executing an innocent man. A wrongful conviction is something that could potentially happen to anyone. DNA evidence was not yet used when Williamson was convicted, but it now proves that innocent people are convicted and sentenced, and not just in isolated events. The tools the prosecution used for Williamson included fingerprint analysis, forensic testing, and a jail house snitch, all inaccurate in some way. A state witness even turned out to be the actual murderer.
And:
Ron Williamson’s story tells us that due process and our criminal justice system must continually be worked on to bring about justice.
I submit that the moral compass that Mr. Clark speaks of must point also toward insuring that only the guilty be convicted and put behind bars.
Earlier coverage from Kansas begins here.
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