University Daily Kansan / Thursday, January 26, 1989
9
Death penalty opponents say system needs change
Hearings go on
by John P. Milburn Kansan staff writer
TOPEKA — Opponents of capital punishment at a Senate committee public hearing yesterday conveyed a need for a change in Kansas's system of justice.
Members of the Senate Federal and State Affairs committee now will consider testimony from those on both sides of the issue. Chairman Ed Reilly Jr., R. Leavenworth, said a bill to reinstate the death penalty would be defeated on the Senate floor within two weeks.
At the hearing, opponents of the death penalty decried the use of violence to respond to violence.
"A violent response will not eliminate future violence." Bill Lucero said.
Universalist Service Committee Unit of Kansas, said he did not doubt the support of states for the death penalty. But other states with support for the death penalty also had support for stiffer life sentences when polled, he said.
nature violence. Bill Lecarre and
Lucero, a representative for the Unitarian
polled, he said.
"Ask if you need if a person favors the same penalty, and you are likely to get the same response if you were to ask 'should the legislature reduce taxes,' " Lucero said.
has been suggested he would have a
A drawback to the death penalty is the cost
to the state, said David Gottlieb, KU professor of law, who testified at the hearing. He said the death penalty would cost Kansas about $12 million a year.
he said alternatives to the death penalty would be tougher requirements for parole or the creation of correctional industries where profits would go to a victim support fund, as has been suggested in other states.
Recent decisions by the Kansas Supreme Court on attorney compensation would cost
taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars more for defense than previously estimated, Gottlieb said.
heb pals perhaps capital punishment in a place like the Soviet Union or Iran can deter, although I doubt it," Gottlieb said. "But there is no doubt that the reality of capital punishment in this country in the 1980s is that it is a dismal failure as deterrence."
it is a dishmale Gottlieb said that revision within the current system was needed. The death penalty take time away from law enforcement officials needed on non-capital crimes, he said.
said.
Donna Schneweis, a representative of Amnesty International, said, "Our organization recognizes that governments have responsibility to provide for public safety. But we know that the death penalty is not the way to justice and that public security is not enhanced by killing."
Schneweis cited cases from other states
where innocent people were executed.
Human fallibility should not come into play with the death penalty to ensure protection of the rights of the convicted, she said.
Gordon Parks, a member of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said that changes had to occur in the system to ensure that it was fair to all races.
Parks, a black psychiatrist, said that figures indicated that more blacks were given the death penalty for killing whites than blacks killing blacks or whites who had killed blacks.
killer blacks." "A greater number of blacks occupy the prison systems in almost every state in the U.S." Parks said. "The city and county jails have histories of a disproportionate number of the black population."
Ken Groves, a member of the NAACP, said that Kansas was the basket of conservative racism and that the injustice of blacks in the penal system would continue with the death
penalty.
The argument that the death penalty keeps criminals from repeating their crimes is false, said Michael Barbara, former Kansas secretary of corrections.
Due process of law would suffer as well, said Gordon Risk, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. He said the death penalty was a cruel and unusual punishment that infringed on the rights of the accused and was an ineffective deterrent to murder.
Risk used Tuesday's execution of Ted Bundy, who was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl, as an adult in criminals who disregard possible death sentences.
Alma Weber, mother of Paul Weber, a state parole officer killed in 1976, said she viewed capital punishment as a form of retaliation fed by continual anger. To be in favor of the bill would be unfair to her children and herself, she said.
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