Today's Topeka Capital-Journal reports, "Senators to take up death penalty measures," by Tim Carpenter. Here's an extended excerpt:
"Eleven years is too long to hear the Supreme Court appeal in a death penalty case," said Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence.
King, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, scheduled hearings for Thursday on contrary bills related to capital punishment. A bill endorsed by King attempts to speed the state's judicial process for courts to weigh life-or-death appeals to around three years.
The Senate committee also plans to take testimony on a bill offered by Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, to replace Kansas' death penalty with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
"I feel it's an important issue any time we talk about government having sole authority to take lives," she said.
Kansas reimposed the death penalty in 1994, but no one has been executed. Thirteen men have been sentenced to death in that time. Five death sentences were overturned by the Supreme Court, and eight appeals are pending in the state.
The Kansas Judicial Council, which offers advice to lawmakers on legal matters, is working on an updated study of the cost of handling the state's death penalty cases. A council committee met Tuesday to work out details of a draft report focusing on cases emerging after the 2003 cost study of the issue by the Legislative Post Audit Committee. It won't be finished by Thursday's hearing in the Senate.
"We cannot have a completed report," said committee chairman Stephen Robison, of Wichita. "We don't have the bottom line. The committee could say the cost of death penalty cases is extraordinarily more costly than non-death penalty cases."
In 2003, the Legislature's auditing arm concluded costs of death penalty cases to taxpayers was about 70 percent greater than those not brought under the capital punishment law.
"Kansas Senate panel taking up changes to capital punishment, 'Hard 50' penalties," is AP coverage, via the Tribune.
A Kansas Senate committee is taking up proposed changes in the state's murder statutes, including tougher penalties for attempted capital murder.
Bills before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday are byproducts of a 2013 special session when legislators rewrote the procedure for imposing the "Hard 50" sentence for premeditated first-degree murder.
The new proposal would change the presumptive sentence for the crimes to a minimum of life without parole eligibility for 50 years, with juries weighing evidence that could reduce the sentence to a minimum of 25 years to life.
Earlier coverage from Kansas begins at the link. Related posts are in the state legislation category index.
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