US Supreme Court considers death penalty

The United States Supreme Court is scheduled to hear two death penalty cases this week, one from Kansas and the other from Oregon.  In the Oregon death penalty case, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving a convicted murder’s ability to present alibi testimony during the sentencing portion of his trial.  In the Kansas death penalty case, Capital Appellate Defender Rebecca Woodman and Attorney General Pill Kline are preparing to present their arguments to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of Kansas’s death penalty law.  Both of these cases were not scheduled to go before the Supreme Court until spring 2006. 

The Kansas death penalty case came before the state Supreme Court in December 2004, where judges ruled 4-3 that the death penalty law was unconstitutional because jury instructions unfairly encouraged jurors to choose the death penalty over a life prison sentence. 

Kansas law instructs jurors to weigh the mitigating and aggravating factors in a capital case.  Mitigating factors can reduce the crime’s severity, such as the defendant having no prior criminal history.  Aggravating factors increase the severity of the crime, such as the defendant killed more than one person, the murder involved a child or police officer, or the defendant had a prior criminal record.  If the weight of these factors seems to be equal, the jury is told to side with the state. 

According to Attorney General Kline, the Kansas death penalty law is fair because it neither mandates nor restricts a juror’s ability to weigh in all the mitigating factors presented by the criminal defendant.  Appellate Defender Woodman, however, argues that Kansas law forces juries to weigh the evidence for and against the death penalty.  The defense believes the structure of the Kansas death penalty law actually restricts jurors’ decision making abilities. 

The outcome of this Supreme Court ruling over the Kansas death penalty will have a tremendous impact on several capital cases.  If the Supreme Court upholds the Kansas law, eight men on death row will still await their state execution.    If the Supreme Court declares the Kansas law unconstitutional, these eight men will be re-sentenced and the death penalty will not be an option. 

Thirty eight states currently allow the death penalty as a sentencing option in capital cases.  In the majority of these states lethal injection is the primary, or only, method of capital punishment.  Other methods are available in some states.