Botched Executions

New Questions about the Death Penalty

News of a botched execution attempt in Ohio and a miscarriage of justice in Texas where an innocent man was executed for the arson murder of his three children has raised new questions about the death penalty.

A growing chorus of diverse voices that support the death penalty in principle are turning against it in practice because of risk, cost, unfairness, the availability of a life sentence without parole and a growing realization that the death penalty system takes a toll on victims’ family and friends.

A 2006 University of Kentucky poll showed that 67% favor a penal option other than death in capital murder cases. A 2009 report by the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission stated that 108 cases were potentially eligible for the death penalty in 2007. Public records show that no new inmates have joined the 36 death row inmates since November 2006, the last time a Kentucky jury returned a death sentence.

Some informed observers think a cluster of Kentucky Death Row cases could reach final conclusion in the same year thereby presenting the potential for multiple executions in a narrow time frame.

Since 1962, three death row inmates have been put to death in Kentucky and two of them dropped their court cases and asked to be executed.

A justice system that produces the grim spectacle of multiple executions after only 3 in 47 years is presumptively dysfunctional and suggests the system is regulated by the same laws that govern lightning: no one knows where or when it will strike or whom, if anyone, it will hit or whom, if anyone, it will kill.

DV