CAMPUS/AREA
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Wednesday, January 12, 1994
3
Death penalty haunts legislators
House, Senate confront bills
By Stephen Martino
Kansan staff writer
In the past 14 years, Kansas governors and legislators often have been uneasy partners in a careful dance to reinstate the death penalty.
Today, they may not be holding hands, but they seem to be moving in the same direction.
Two bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to return execution of criminals back to Kansas for the
first time since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all death penalty laws in 1972.
State Sen. Mark Parkinson, R-Olathe, introduced one bill with 13 co-sponsors yesterday. Monday, the Legislature's first day, State Rep. Greg Packer, R-Topeka, joined by 30 of his colleagues, introduced a similar proposal.
In past years, attempts to pass death penalty legislation have been thwarted by one body of the Legislature or sunk by a gubernatorial veto.
However, Gov. Joan Finney said in her State of the State Address last night that she would allow the bill to become law without her signature.
I have said consistently and repeatedly I will not sign a death penalty bill," she said. "However, I do believe that a majority of
Kansans support the death penalty."
House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, said he thought a death penalty bill had a 50-50 chance of passing the House this year.
"The death penalty doesn't have anything to do with crime," he said. "There is no evidence that supports it as a deterrent."
However, Packer said it was time for the death penalty in Kansas.
"We as a society allowed people to do whatever they want. It is time to punish people for what they do," he said.
Packer's bill allows prosecutors to seek the death penalty for first-degree murder and felony murder, which is a murder that occurs during the commission of a felony crime. It provides an automatic appeal to the Kansas Supreme Court and would ban
executing anyone 15 years and younger and anvowe developmentally disabled.
Parkinson's bill is drawn more narrowly. Only persons convicted of first-degree murder would be eligible for execution.
No Democrats co-sponsored either of the bills introduced. Sawyer said most Democrats would oppose the bills.
However, it is not strictly a partisan matter. State Sen. Dick Bond, R-Overland Park, will lead the charge to kill the bills in Senate. He is considered one of the Senate's most influential members.
"A majority of people in a casual poll say they favor the death penalty," he said. "After it is explained to most people about costs, $2 million or more to put someone to death, support is substantially reduced," he said.
Detention center construction may start next month Facility for juveniles received minimal resident opposition
Joe Harder/KANSAN
By Liz Chadwick Kansan staff writer
Craig Weigand, Douglas County administr, said he hoped construction for the new juvenile detention center planned for North Lawrence, could start at the beginning of February. weather conditions permitting.
The detention center is scheduled to open next November.
The center, 330 Industrial Lane, will be located behind the Bismark Inn, 1100 North Third St., said Pam Weigand, juvenile defense director for northeast Kansas.
Up to 16 juvenile offenders, both male and female, could be housed in the center.
Weinaug said the decision to build the center was made by the state to meet a federal mandate to keep juveniles and adults separate.
Weinaug said housing juvenile offenders was more expensive than housing adult prisoners in a Douglas County jail. It costs $150 a day to house each juvenile prisoner. We're mandated by the state to provide schooling, recreation facilities and extra supervision, both male and female," he said.
In contrast, adult prisoners in jail cost $30 to $40 a day. The center will be modeled after a school, Weinaug said. Males and females will be separated for most of the day but will be allowed to interact at certain times.
"The facility will be designed to provide the separation that is required in housing both male and female offenders," he said.
Weigand, who worked at a juvenile shelter and detention center in Hutchinson before coming to Lawrence in May 1992, said holding males and females together rarely caused problems.
Weigand and Weinaug both said the North Lawrence residents generally were receptive to having the detention center in their neighborhood.
Weinaug said he received one negative letter in opposition to the center, but the person who wrote the letter did not live in North Lawrence.
When North Lawrence was proposed as a location for the new juvenile detention center, the Douglas County juvenile judge, Sheriff Loren Anderson, and members of the Douglas County Commission met with the North Lawrence Neighborhood Association to discuss the issue.
The estimated cost of construction for the center is $1,443.000, she said.
There are 10 juvenile detention centers in Kansas, four regional facilities for each county and four metro locations in Topeka, Wichita and Johnson and Wyandotte counties.
Weigand said the center in Lawrence would house juveniles from Kansas and any extra overflow from other centers in the state.
After finishing his book, "Time, Politics, and Policies," about the 1988-89 Kansas Legislature, Burdett Loomis, professor of political science, relaxes at his home.
Jennie Zeiner / KANSAN
Photo unites time, politics in new book
By Susan White
Kansan staff writer
Burdett Loomis, professor of political science, got the idea for his new book from an old photograph.
"This book began with a hazy remembrance from an old photo — that of state legislators, perhaps from Louisiana, physically holding back the hands of their chamber's clocks," said Burdett Loomis, professor of political science, in his new book, "Time, Politics, and Policies."
The book, which went on sale yesterday, describes the nature of time in relation to the workings of the 1988-89 Kansas Legislature. Loomis was on sabbatical from the University during that year and watched the Legislature closely.
Loomis said the concept of time in policymaking could be seen yesterday, the first day of the 1994 Legislature.
"That Legislature will run for 90 days and at the end of 90 days it will be over," he said. "Everyone knows about when it is going to end, and so a lot of decisions are made toward the end. At a certain point, someone has to figure out what's going to be made and what is not."
Loomis said he used newspaper clippings, interviews and snatches of conversation he overheard during his visits to the Capitol in Topeka.
While observing the Legislature, Loomis said, he learned much about the Legislature's use of time that he had not been aware of. For instance, he discovered that the view some political scientists have of policymakers being more concerned with getting reelected than getting their job done did not apply to the Legislature. In fact, most legislators worked quickly to move legislation through the system.
In addition, Loomis said he learned that important policy issues such as highway projects sometimes did not receive much debate time on the floor of the Legislature.
He also said the Legislature made Kansas seem small. "On the state capitol everybody knows everybody else," Loomis said. "You do see a fair amount of closeknit alliances. People who knew each other in college or high school. There are also a lot of formal relationships. People with cousins or people who marry into a family. It comes out in conversations all the time. There are linkages there that do not appear on the surface."
Russell Getter, an associate professor of political science who read a draft of the book while it was still in the processing stage, said he gave Loomis only minor suggestions.
"I think it is a timely and important work in political science," he said. "I think it is relevant to the political process, and it illustrates the difficulties that legislators and governors must go through to coordinate various problems and issues to guide them through the political process."
Loomis, who is on sabbatical this year, has been a professor at the University of Kansas since 1979. During that time, he has worked on various research projects, and he wrote his first book in 1988.
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