ABA: Suspend executions in Kentucky

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Kentucky should suspend all executions indefinitely because of a high rate of convictions being reversed, no standard for attorneys handling capital cases and few protections against executing the mentally disabled, the American Bar Association recommended in a study released Wednesday.

ABA President William Robinson of Florence, Ky., said the main issue is ensuring that an innocent person isn't executed because of a flaw in the system.

"When a person's life is at stake, the guarantee of fairness and due process are paramount," Robinson said during a Wednesday morning press conference at the state capitol in Frankfort.

Team members included two former state Supreme Court justices, law professors and private attorneys.

"It is the Assessment Team's unanimous view that so long as Kentucky imposes the death penalty, it must be reserved for the worst offenders and offenses, ensure heightened due process and minimize risk of executing the innocent," the 438-page report stated.

Linda Ewald, a University of Louisville law professor and a member of the study team, said team members "were left with no option" but to recommend a moratorium on executions.

"We came into this with no real idea of what we would find," Ewald said. "This report is really about the administration of justice in Kentucky."

The report is part of the ABA's Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project, which has examined eight other states since 2001. The project calls for a nationwide moratorium on executions while problems are addressed.

The project recommended similar suspensions in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee, but did not go that far in studies done in Florida, Arizona and Pennsylvania. States being examined are Missouri, Texas and Virginia.

No state has followed through on the moratorium recommendation, but Ohio and Tennessee used the ABA reports as a blueprint to create commissions to study the death penalty, while Florida took up an ABA recommendation to create a commission to examine wrongful convictions in the state.

In Kentucky, executions are already on hold pending the outcome of a case in Franklin Circuit Court.

"In the meantime, we will carefully review and study the 400-plus page report provided by the ABA assessment team," Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear said.

Donald Vish of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty applauded the ABA for conducting the report, but called on Kentucky to eliminate the death penalty.

"What is surprising is that there continues to be the hope that this broken system of death sentencing can be repaired," Vish said.

In Kentucky's report, the team found that of the 78 people sentenced to death since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, 50 have had convictions or sentences overturned by state or federal courts -- an error rate of about 64 percent.

Kentucky Chief Justice John D. Minton, who collected seven copies of the report for the justices, said the statistics show that the high court is handling capital cases well.

"In my point of view, on the appellate level, the system is working," Minton said.

Team members also concluded the state needs tighter rules regarding the preservation of evidence, noting there are no statewide regulations for what to do with items while an inmate remains incarcerated. That lack of guidance could deprive someone of an opportunity for post-conviction DNA testing that could cast doubt on their conviction, the ABA team concluded.

Researchers also found that Kentucky lacks safeguards for ensuring the mentally disabled are not wrongfully convicted.

The team also found that 10 attorneys whose clients ended up on death row were later disbarred. At least five of those attorneys had their law licenses revoked for conduct related to the capital case, including Fred Radolovich, who represented a man known as James Earl Slaughter. It came to light later that Slaughter's real name was Jeffrey DeVan Leonard, something Radolovich did not learn in handling the case. Radolovich resigned from the bar after being charged with perjury related to Leonard's appeal.

The researchers credited Kentucky with creating a public defender system and enacting a law allowing post-conviction DNA testing.

Kentucky has executed three people since 1976, the most recent being Marco Allen Chapman in 2008.

Beshear had set an execution date in September 2010 for 56-year-old Gregory L. Wilson, who was sentenced to death for the 1987 kidnapping, rape and murder of 36-year-old Debbie Pooley in northern Kentucky. Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd stopped that execution and all others while questions remain about how prison officials would handle tests for competency, sanity and mental retardation once an execution date is set.

A final ruling is pending in that case. Kentucky also lacks a supply of sodium thiopental, the first drug used in a lethal injection, because of a national shortage of the narcotic.

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Online: http://www.americanbar.org/groups/individual_rights/projects/death_penalty_moratorium_implementation_project/death_penalty_assessments/kentucky.html

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Associated Press reporter Brett Barrouquere is on Twitter: http://twitter.com/BBarrouquereAP