Legal groups challenge death penalty in Kansas, 60 years after state’s last execution | CRMS

KANSAS CITY, Kansas — Lawyers and expert witnesses from across the country packed a stuffy Wyandotte County courtroom Monday to bring the death penalty to trial.

National civil rights groups have organized a series of hearings arguing that the way the death penalty is administered in Kansas is unconstitutional.

This is one of the earliest suits of this type the lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group joined in the case by the Kansas Division of Death Penalty and the law firms Hogan Lovells and Ali & Lockwood.

They filed motions in the separate cases of Hugo Villanueva-Morales, accused of killing several people in a bar shooting, and Antoine Fielder, accused of shooting and murder two police officers in Kansas City, Kansas in 2018. The execution was carried out in neighboring Missouri last month. Marcellus Williamsanother black man.

Critics have long argued that the death penalty is inhumane, expensive and ineffective at deterring crime. Kansas one of 27 states where the practice is still legal, although the last state execution there was in 1965.

Now the plaintiffs are clinging to arguments against capital punishment qualification, a rule requiring that anyone who sits on a jury for a death sentence must believe that government execution is a permissible form of punishment.

Megan Byrne, a staff attorney for the ACLU, said in an interview that Black people are more likely to be excluded from juries, in part because of the death penalty.

Byrne said this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of racial bias in death penalty trials.

“Disqualification in death cases results in non-diverse juries, which results in a disproportionate number of Black and Brown people being convicted, which also fuels the understandable skepticism that the Black and Brown community may have towards this process, which then leads to their exclusion from the jury. And so it’s really a feedback loop that needs to be broken,” she said.

Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said the plaintiffs took the case to trial prematurely. Neither defendant has yet been tried in a death penalty case or faced a potentially biased jury.

However, Byrne said she hopes the Wyandotte County District Attorney will drop the death penalty charges against the defendants and appoint a committee to investigate the death penalty findings.

If that doesn’t happen, the plaintiffs can continue their case until it reaches the Kansas Supreme Court.

The state’s highest court previously declined to rule on the death penalty itself. But the ACLU and partners are hopeful that a new approach focused on racist implications and death classification, bolstered by recent research in Kansas, can tip the balance.

2022 survey In Sedgwick County, Kansas, black respondents were estimated to be 50% more likely to be disqualified from jurors than their white counterparts. The ACLU reports that women and religious people are also at higher risk.

Alex Valdez, staff attorney for the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project, hopes for scientific evidence combined with decrease in approval the death penalty in American society will help influence Judge Bill Clapper, who is overseeing the case.

“This puts Judge Clapper in a very unique position: He is the first judge who will actually hear the full detailed history of the evidence that we present,” Valdez said.

Court briefs point to similar arguments about racial bias in imposing the death penalty that have been successful in cases in Connecticut and Washington, where the practice was recently stopped.

Carol Staker, a subject expert at Harvard Law School, was the first witness to testify in Kansas on behalf of the ACLU. She said the evidence presented in this state could support similar efforts elsewhere.

“Every time a state abolishes the death penalty, it makes it easier for other states to do so,” she said.

Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for Kansas News Service. You can write to him at [email protected].

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