University Daily Kansan, March 21, 1985
CAMPUS AND AREA
Page 11
Committee hears views of both sides
Death penalty bill draws testimonv
By NANCY HANEY
Staff Reporter
TOPEKA — Clergy, law enforcement officials, a student and a former Kansas governor testified before a Senate committee yesterday to express their views about a bill that would reinstitute the death penalty.
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee lengthened its four-hour meeting to an hour and a half. The committee also list of opponents and proponents.
Committee Chairman Ed Reilly Jr. R-Leavenworth, has spoken as a supporter of the death penalty and has tried unsuccessfully to gain enough votes for passage in the last few years.
The bill would mandate death by lethal injection for anyone convicted of premeditated first-degree murder.
The bill started in the House this session and passed in February by a 78-46 vote. Gov. John Carlin, who had been pressed by the Senate later this month.
TO OVERRIDE THE veto, a
Senate vote would be
House and Senate would be
needed. The House lacked that majority last month.
State Rep. Clyde Graecer, R-Leavenworth, testified before the committee in support of the bill, and said he thought the bill would be a better option to override a veto.
The Legislature never has overridden a veto by Carlin.
State representatives Jessie Branson, Betty Jo Charlton and John Solbach, all Democrats from Lawrence, voted against the House bill.
William Avery, a former governor of Kansas, testified before the Seante committee in support of the bill. He was speaking on behalf of himself.
AVERY SAID HE dealt with the death penalty while he was in office, when Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were sentenced to death for the 1859 murders of four members of the Clutter family in Colby.
Hickock appealed his case to Avery.
"I talked to Hickock's mother and brother and listened to them plead for his life," he said. "But while I was listening to them, I could picture Clutter pleading to Hickock for his life and the lives of his family."
Thomas Kelly, director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, also
testified in favor of the bill. He said neither opponents nor proponents of the death penalty could win the argument about its value in deterring
THE DEATH PENALTY gives no way of telling how many people were stopped from committing a murder and they feared the punishment, he said.
Kelly said that four triple homicides had occurred in the state since November and that something needs to be done to combat the large number of murders in the state.
"Let's face the real motive, the murderers have drawn blood and now we want to do the same," he said.
William Lucero, a member of the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee of Kansas, was one of several clergy to testify.
'FIRST-DDEGREE MURDER is the ultimate crime, deserving the highest award for bravery.
"It won't bring anybody back," he said. "No matter what you do to the murderer, it won't make the hurt go away."
Donna Schneweis, a member of Amnesty International, testified against the bill. She said she thought the use of capital punishment was a
violation of basic human rights
"There is no difference between injecting a drug in the Soviet Union to cause a person to go into convulsions for a punishment for drug abuse and injecting a drug to someone to cause death," she said.
Richard Ney, a public defender in Topeka, also testified in opposition to the bill, which said the cost of reinstating capital taxes was too much for the state to afford.
He said a person convicted of first-degree murder would spend an average of 10 years on death row and receive only 12 separate appeals after the trial.
John Miller, a student at Maur Hill College in Atchison, said he objected to capital punishment because he thought it was a cruel and unusual punishment. He also said such punishment left room for discrimination against the poor and minorities.
A separate block would have to be created in prisons for death row inmates, he said, costing the state more money.
He also said he had been taught as a child that two wrongs did not make a child.
"That's what you are trying to do here," he said.
Chairman of commission to discuss waste proposals
J. Peter Grace, who headed a presidential commission that reported the federal government was wasting millions of dollars a year, will speak about the commission's cost-saving recommendations at 8 p.m. April 16 in Doudruff Auditorium.
Grace, a New York industrialist and chairman of the Grace Commission, has launched a public relations campaign to defend and promote the commission's recommendations. The report claimed government can trick $425 million by carrying out its proposals.
Grace's appearance is sponsored by KU's Vickers Memorial Lecture Series. The series began in 1982 and commemorate J.A. Vickers Sr.
The commission's report, published early in 1984, has been criticized by federal agencies and consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who said many of the recommendations were impractical.
After jointly reviewing the commission's proposals, the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office said the proposed savings had been overestimated by about $235 million.
ON CAMPUS
LATIN AMERICAN Solidarity's weekly rice and dinner will be at 6 p.m. at Ecumenical Christian Ministries, 1204 Oread Ave.
THE ROCK CHACK Rowdies will meet at 7 p.m. in Allen Field House.
THE SOCILOGY CLUB will present a roundtable discussion on intimate relationships at 4 p.m. in the Room of the Kansas Union
Kansas will conduct a general membership meeting at 7:30 p.m. in the International Room of the Union.
KU'S PERSONNEL CLUB, Sigma Psi, will present a talk by Laurie Getter, an employee at Packer Games, in the Cork II Room of the Union.
GAY AND LESBIAN Services of
THE COALITION OF Student Social Workers will meet at 8 p.m. in the Oread Room of the Union. The chairman of the National Association of Social Workers will speak on current issues and social welfare.