Death Penalty: Kentucky Launches an Assessment

Kentucky is the first state to launch an evaluation of its death penalty jurisprudence under the second phase of the American Bar Association Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project’s state assessment project.

A team of 10 legal experts from across the state will assess the way Kentucky applies the death penalty, applying protocols developed by the Moratorium Implementation Project as a framework for state analysis of death penalty jurisprudence called for in ABA policy adopted in 1997.  Though the association neither supports nor opposes capital punishment, it urged states to review their death penalty jurisprudence to ensure it provides due process and fairness, and minimizes the risk of wrongful executions.  The ABA House of Delegates called for a halt to all executions until each state that imposes capital punishment conducts an assessment and addresses any problems identified in that review.

Volunteer legal teams in eight states evaluated their death penalty systems in the first phase of the state assessment project between 2003 and 2007.  An additional six states are to be assessed in the second phase.  Kentucky was the first state selected for the second phase, primarily because it is the only state that has experience with a racial justice act. 

Kentucky’s team is chaired by Linda S. Ewald, a professor at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville, and Michael J. Z. Mannheimer, associate professor at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University.  Other team members are Martin E. Johnstone and James Keller, former justices of the Kentucky Supreme Court; Gordie Shaw, Commonwealth’s attorney for the Fourteenth Judicial Circuit, Versailles; Allison Connelly, director of the legal clinic at the University of Kentucky College of Law in Lexington; and private practitioners Michael Bowling and Don Cetrulo, both of Lexington.