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Legal groups challenge the death penalty in Kansas, 60 years after the state’s last execution

A row of stone columns, which forms the outside of the Wyandotte County District Courthouse.
Zane Irwin
/
Kansas News Service
National legal groups brought their challenge in Wyandotte County District Court.

The American Civil Liberties Union joins law firms to argue that capital trial juries in Kansas are racially discriminatory.

KANSAS CITY, Kansas – Attorneys and expert witnesses from across the country crammed into a stuffy Wyandotte County District courtroom on Monday to put the death penalty on trial.

National legal advocacy groups set off a series of hearings to argue that the way capital punishment is applied in Kansas is unconstitutional.

It’s one of the earliest suits of its kind filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a legal advocacy group, joined in this case by the Kansas Death Penalty Unit and law firms Hogan Lovells and Ali & Lockwood.

They filed motions in the separate cases of Hugo Villanueva-Morales, accused of killing several people in a bar shooting, and Antoine Fielder, accused of shooting and killing two Wyandotte County sheriff's deputies in 2018. Last month, neighboring Missouri executed Marcellus Williams, another Black man.

Critics have long argued that capital punishment is inhumane, expensive and ineffective at deterring crime. Kansas is one of 27 states where the practice is still legal, though the last state execution here was in 1965.

Now, litigants are latching onto arguments against death qualification, a rule requiring that anyone serving on a capital jury must believe state execution is a valid form of punishment.

Megan Byrne, a staff attorney with the ACLU, said in an interview that Black people are struck from capital juries at higher rates, in part because of death qualification.

Byrne said it creates a self-reinforcing cycle of racial bias in capital trials.

“Death disqualification leads to non-diverse juries, which leads to disproportionate amounts of Black and brown people being convicted, which also feeds into understandable skepticism that Black and brown communities might have about the process — which will then get them kicked off of juries. And so it's really a feedback loop that needs to be broken,” she said.

Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said the plaintiffs had brought the case to court prematurely. Neither defendant has been tried yet in a capital punishment trial, or faced a potentially biased jury.

Nevertheless, Byrne said she hopes the Wyandotte County district attorney will drop capital punishment charges against the defendants and appoint a committee to investigate their findings on the death penalty.

If that doesn’t happen, the plaintiffs could pursue their case until it reaches the Kansas Supreme Court.

The state’s highest court has previously declined to rule on the death penalty itself. But the ACLU and partners are hoping a new approach focusing on racist outcomes and death qualification — bolstered by recent studies in Kansas — could tip the scales.

A 2022 survey in Sedgwick County, Kansas, estimated that Black respondents were 50% more likely to be disqualified from a capital jury than their white counterparts. The ACLU says women and religious people are also excluded at higher rates.

Alex Valdez, a staff attorney on the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, hopes scholarly evidence, combined with diminishing approval of the death penalty in the American public, will help sway Judge Bill Klapper, who’s overseeing the case.

“It puts Judge Klapper in a very unique position where he's the first judge to really hear this full detailed history of the evidence that we're presenting,” Valdez said.

Court briefs point to similar arguments of racial bias in the institution of capital punishment succeeding in cases in Connecticut and Washington state, which recently ended the practice.

Carol Steiker, a subject matter expert at Harvard Law School, was the first witness to testify in Kansas on behalf of the ACLU. She said the evidence presented in this state could support similar efforts elsewhere.

“Each time a state abolishes the death penalty, it makes it easier for other states to do that,” she said.

Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.

The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.

Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.

Corrected: October 29, 2024 at 9:33 AM CDT
This story has been updated to show that Antoine Fielder is accused of shooting and killing two Wyandotte County sheriff's deputies.
Political discussions might make you want to leave the room. But whether you’re tuned in or not, powerful people are making decisions that shape your everyday life, from access to health care to the price of a cup of coffee. As political reporter for the Kansas News Service and KCUR, I’ll illuminate how elections, policies and other political developments affect normal people in the Sunflower State. You can reach me at zaneirwin@kcur.org