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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Anti Death Penalty Group Speaks Out on Lethal Injection Ruling

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Friday, November 27, 2009   

FRANKFORT, Ken. - Death penalty opponents in Kentucky say actions taken this week surrounding the state's use of lethal injection show major flaws in the justice system. The Kentucky Supreme Court has issued a four-to-three ruling saying the state acted improperly by not posting public notices and holding hearings before deciding on a three-drug lethal injection protocol.

Rev. Pat Delahanty, chair of the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, says the decision comes just days after attorney general Jack Conway requested execution dates be set for three condemned inmates, while the case was still being considered by the Supreme Court.

"There are many aspects of the death penalty system in Kentucky that don't work well and this is just another example of an area where that's true."

Delahanty disagrees with the opinion of one dissenting judge, who said the state Supreme Court decision gives the guilty more time to live and the families of the victims more time to suffer.

"The people who selected to prosecute for a death sentence knew ahead of time of the safeguards that are in place, and they chose to put victims' family members through twenty years of hell."

The decision assures that, if Kentucky chooses to continue pursuing the death penalty, it will have to do so by the letter of the law, he adds.

"When government is going to take human life, then government needs to be under extreme scrutiny, and we should have a chance to comment on how they are going to do it."

Gov. Beshear hadn't acted on the execution date requests when the ruling came down and is now reviewing the decision. Along with the Coalition, a group of public defenders and other attorneys have asked Beshear to halt all executions pending an American Bar Association review of the Commonwealth's death penalty system.





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