"Death penalty in Kansas: Will the state ever execute another prisoner?" is by Giles Bruce in the Lawrence Journal-World. Here's the beginning:
Moments before he was hanged to death, George York expressed contrition for his sins.
"There is nothing to say but that I'm going to heaven," he said, according to newspaper reports from the time. "I know it wouldn't do me much good to say I'm sorry. God has forgiven me and I hope you people can see fit to do the same."
The state of Kansas had not forgiven York, convicting him of one of several murders he had confessed to as part of a cross-country killing spree with fellow Army deserter James Latham. So on June 22, 1965, York was led up the 13 steps of the gallows at the Kansas State Penitentiary in Lansing. A prison chaplain read from the 23rd Psalm as the noose was placed around York's neck. At 12:53 a.m., the trap door dropped. The 22-year-old was pronounced dead 19 minutes later.
York was the last person executed by the state of Kansas. In recent years, several states have banned capital punishment. It is on hiatus in some states because of problems obtaining the drugs used in lethal injections, which has led to botched executions, mostly recently in Oklahoma. But in Kansas, the death penalty is in a sort of legal limbo: still on the books, just not being carried out.
There have been no executions in the 20 years since the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas, due, observers say, to an exhaustive appeals process, a cautious state Supreme Court dealing with a fairly new and restrictive law, and the state's relatively low murder rate. Nine men are currently on death row in Kansas.
Earlier coverage from Kansas begins at the link.
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