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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY
KS STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
PO BOX 3585
TOPEKA, KS 66601-3585
Kansan
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Thursday
April 16, 1998
Section:
A
Vol. 108 * No. 138
Ekdahl Dining Commons
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Oliver Hall
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Kansas Union
8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Burge Union
8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Last chance to vote!
Vol.108·No.138
Haworth Hall Wescoe Hall Strong Hall 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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Omission found on Student Senate election ballots; CLAS candidate not named on list
By Melissa Ngo
mngo@kanson.com
Kansas staff writer
Maria Abatoglou, Delta Force candidate for a Liberal Arts and Sciences seat, was left off the ballot for the Student Senate elections.
The polls opened at 8 a.m., and the mistake was discovered at 9:30 a.m. Posters stating Abatjoglou should be written in were put at all polling sites half an hour later
"Delta Force was allowed to check the ballots before they were printed," said Brad Finkeldei, Elections Commission chairman. "It's both our faults because neither group caught the mistake."
Abatijoglou: Frustrated by efforts to remedy problem
Abatjoglou said she was frustrated about how the commission had handled the mistake.
"I understand that human errors occur," she said. "My problem is that when it was brought to their notice, something substantial was not done until 2 p.m."
At 1:30 p.m., poll workers were told to tell CLAS voters that Abatjoglou was a candidate. At 2:15 p.m., the commission and poll workers began to handwrite Abatjoglou's name onto the ballots.
"I went and policed every poll site, and I shouldn't have to do that," Abatjoglou said. "After poll workers were told to tell voters that I was a candidate. I didn't see workers at two sites saving anything about it."
Abatjoglou said she also was frustrated that she had not received an apology from the commission.
Finkeldei said he had not been able to talk to Abatjoglou and therefore, could not have apologized to her.
"I offer the apology of the Elections Commission," he said. "We were doing our best to get the hired workers to do what was asked, but it is hard."
Emily Heath, Delta Force candidate for student body president, checked the ballots before the ballots were printed.
"It's partially our fault." Heath said. "We didn't think that we would have to check for the candidates to be on the ballots. We checked for spelling errors."
A QUESTION OF
Life & Death
STORY BY GERRY DOYLE GRAPHICS BY ANDREW RO'FIRBACK AND JASON BENAVIDES
GARY KLEYPAS
Some time in the next century according to the national average, about 2006 Gary Kleypas will be taken from his cell in Lansing Correctional Facility. Clad in an orange jumpsuit, he will stand. A warden will lead him from his bed, his stainless steel toilet, the concrete walls that have housed him. A team of Department of Corrections employees will surround him. Most likely, restraints will be unnecessary because of the sedatives he will have been given a few hours earlier.
Then this group will take a short walk along the last 20 minutes of Kleypas' life.
Truman Capote made Kansas' executions famous in his novel "In Cold Blood" when he described the execution of Richard Hickock, who with Perry Smith was convicted of multiple murders in Kansas in 1961.
Unlike Capote's grim scene of the state's most notorious execution, Kleypas' final moments will be, death penalty proponents say, a good way to die.
The gallows that snapped Hickock's and Smith's necks now lies in a storehouse of the Kansas State Historical Society in Topeka.
The pine boards — rough, gray and cold — are stacked indifferently on top of each other, lines worn where they had fit together. An eye bolt about as thick as a child's wrist juts menacingly from a thick beam. It is rusted, but closer inspection shows where the rope had rubbed against the unyielding steel.
The stairs still are recognizable, still bolted together, still facing the trapdoor. Illuminated by the clean, fluorescent lights of the warehouse, the 12 steps seem benign. The unlucky 13th step is the actual platform.
The trapdoor leans upright at the far end of the pile of boards. The steel, bifold doors have been painted black. They are scuffed by the feet of 25 men and are dusty from 33 idle years.
INTO THE CHAMBER
Kleypas and the posse of guards and officials — and maybe a chaplain — will walk into the death chamber where he will spend the last 15 minutes of his life. Directly ahead, through a doorway, a gurney will wait. To the left, on the other side of a cinder block and concrete wall, the execution witnesses will be seated. When the curtains part, they will watch as Kleypas dies.
Kansas' death penalty gained new life in 1994 after the murder of 19-year-old Stephanie Schmidt sparked cries for retribution from Schmidt's family and voters throughout the state.
Donald Ray Gideon, still alive, is serving 99 years and eight months in the El Dorado Correctional Facility for raping, sodomizing and finally strangling Schmidt to death.
"Id like to say justice was served, but until we have the death penalty, I don't think it can be," said Gene Schmidt, Stephanie's father, after Gideon was sentenced.
Schmidt's words pushed a new death penalty bill, sponsored by Rep. Greg Packer of Topeka, onto the House floor. The Senate passed its own, far more restrictive version of the bill; a 67-58 vote made that bill law.
Then-Gov. Joan Finney opposed the death
penalty but allowed it to become law without her signature. Kansas now can execute prisoners by lethal injection.
Jeff Moots, a lawyer with the Kansas Board of Indigent Defense's Death Penalty Defense Unit, was one of Kleypas' defense attorneys. Although Kleypas was convicted and sentenced to die by both jury and judge for stabbing a 20-year-old Pittsburgh State University student to death, Moots said that Kansas' new law would be challenged and probably wouldn't hold up — at least at first.
It would be like New Jersey's first years with a new death penalty law, he predicted.
"Their first 30 or 31 cases were reversed," Moots said. "We're just learning."
He said that appeals would center around many different constitutional issues.
The issue of whether the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment will be at stake, Moots said. Although lethal injection sounds humane and clean, there are problems with it, just as there are with the electric chair, the gas chamber and even hanging.
The state still is considering the best way to go about killing someone by lethal injection, said Bill Miskel, public information officer for the Kansas Department of Corrections.
Condemned prisoners will be held at El Dorado Correctional Facility. They will be kept in administrative segregation, separated from everything but their cell walls throughout much of the day.
"The general population gets out-of-cell time." Miskell said. "But prisoners in administrative segregation are in their cells 23 hours a day."
Kleypas will be transferred to the Lansing Correctional Facility a few days before he is scheduled to die.
The holding area and death chamber are under construction at Lansing now, said Mike Gaito, who is in charge of capital improvements and facilities maintenance for the department of corrections. Specific blueprints
A separate execution facility will ease the stress on prison personnel. After spending years tending to a man who has been sentenced to death, a warden or guard might have a hard time executing someone he or she had come to know well.
See DEATH PENALTY on page 6A
The death penalty, state by state
Lethal injection
Electrovasion
No death penalty
Electrocution
Gas chamber Hanging
Hanging
Lethal injection or electrocution
Alaska Hawaii
Lethal injection or hanging
Lethal injection or firing squad
(ANSAS: Lethal injection
Source: CourtTV
High voter turnout, violations mark first day of elections
Coy Weege, Baldwin City sophomore, and Jeremy Dixon, Overland Park senior, vote in the Student Senate election. The students marked ballots yesterday in front of Wesco Hall. Photo by Jay Sheard/KANSAN
By Marc Sheforgen msheforgen@kansan.com Kansan staff writer
One more day remains for voting, campaigning and controversy. The first day of Student Senate elections included plenty of all three.
A potential campaign violation turned up at the Daisy Hill polling site yesterday evening. Audrey Nogle, elections commissioner, said she would suggest to the elections hearing board that it fine the Campus Cause coalition for having campaign posters visible from the polling site.
Yesterdav's elections included:
The elections code states that no campaign materials are allowed to be visible or audible from a rolling site.
When the polling site opened at 4 p.m., Nogle gave Campus Cause and Delta Force one hour to remove posters displayed in the windows of Lewis Hall. At 5 p.m., Nogle counted six Campus Cause posters but none from Delta Force.
Brenda Chung, Delta Force candidate for a
Nogle said that because of the difficulty of controlling poster display, she thought it was not a good idea to have polling sites at residence halls. She said that this was a severe violation and that each coalition had been warned.
Nunemaker seat, and John Vaglio, Campus Cause candidate for a residential seat, worked to take down the posters before the 5 p.m. deadline. Chung is a resident assistant at Lewis Hall, and Vaglio is one at Templin Hall.
"Everybody knew that this was the big issue as to why we didn't have polling sights here in the past." Nogle said.
The flier contained excerpts from the Student Senate listserv written by three
A flier subtitled, "What Delta Force Doesn't Want You To Know" was posted in several fraternity houses Tuesday. It was written by a group calling itself The Commission Advocating Candidate Information. Neither coalition leader knew who wrote the flier.
See CAMPUS on page 2A
Research by Cammil Andrew Rohbrack / Heimann and Sarah Hale
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