A district court judge has thrown out a challenge to the Kansas death penalty on procedural grounds, but said there are economic and psychological concerns about capital punishment in Kansas.
Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper ruled on Wednesday that the challenge could not move forward because the defendants no longer face the death penalty.
“The impossibility of either defendant being subjected to the death penalty causes them to lose their legal standing,” Klapper wrote in a 15-page decision.
But Klapper added that the case raised major concerns, including evidence that the process is biased against defendants of color.
He also pointed to the financial costs of death penalty cases and the impact the long process has on the families of victims.
“How will families of the victims ever begin to heal and attempt the process of recovery (if that is even possible), when the legal system continues to reopen those painful wounds with each new motion and/or appeal,” Klapper wrote.
Klapper noted that non-capital cases also drag on, but do not require the time or financial cost of death penalty cases. Especially when no one has been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1994.
“(The court) questions the propriety of spending Kansans’ money and causing the victims’ families the extended anguish in keeping a death penalty that the State has not and apparently never will impose,” Klapper wrote.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other national legal groups have awaited the ruling since October, when they filed legal challenges in Kansas against the death penalty and a practice called death qualification.
In a statement, the ACLU highlighted aspects of the judge’s analysis that acknowledged racial inequities in the implementation of death penalty and death qualification. But Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said more work needed to be done.
“While we are relieved that none of our clients have received death sentences, the systemic issues that these cases have brought to light persist,” Stubbs said.
Stubbs also said she hoped state lawmakers would consider taking action to end capital punishment, rather than allowing the issue to be decided in court.
Kansas’ highest court previously declined to rule on the death penalty itself. But the ACLU and partners hoped a new approach focusing on racial differences and death qualification — bolstered by recent studies in Kansas — could tip the scales.
One of the cases focused on Antoine Fielder, 36, who was charged with shooting and killing two Wyandotte County Sheriff’s deputies in 2018. In December, after death penalty lawsuit hearings began, Fielder took a plea agreement and was sentenced to life in prison — avoiding a capital trial.
The other case involved Hugo Villanueva-Morales, 35, who was sentenced to 34 years in prison for opening fire at a tequila bar in Kansas City, Kansas, and killing four people. In February, the state agreed not to seek the death penalty for Villanueva-Morales.
In written closing remarks, the state argued there was no longer a case for the court to consider.
“In this case, the death penalty cannot be a possible punishment of the Defendant’s sentence, therefore his constitutional challenge is not ripe,” wrote Kayla L. Roehler, deputy district attorney for Wyandotte County.
The state argued the proper way to abolish the death penalty would be to urge legislators to change or repeal the law itself.
Regardless, legal scholars, academic researchers and representatives of religious groups came from across the country to a courthouse in Wyandotte County to put the death penalty on trial.
Their testimony featured familiar arguments against capital punishment, citing evidence that the practice is inhumane, expensive and ineffective at deterring crime. Kansas is one of 27 states where the practice is still legal, though the last state execution here was in 1965.
But legal groups also put forth a more targeted challenge to a unique aspect of capital trials known as death qualification. It’s a rule requiring that anyone serving on a capital jury must believe state execution is a valid form of punishment.
Under death qualification, a juror who says they oppose the death penalty on principle is automatically struck. Critics say the practice is discriminatory because some types of people are more likely to be excluded from juries than others.
“This practice disproportionately discriminates against Black people, women, and people of faith,” the ACLU wrote in a release after hearings concluded in January.
Briefings included a study in Wyandotte County that found 41% of Black respondents supported the death penalty, compared to 64% of white participants. Results showed a similar gap between women and men.
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
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