Bipartisan Bill to Abolish Death Penalty Is Filed in Kentucky

The gurney in Huntsville, Texas, where Texas's condemned are strapped down to receive a lethal dose of drugs in this May 27, 2008 file photo. (Pat Sullivan/AP Photo)

A bipartisan bill proposed in the Kentucky legislature would eliminate the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without parole for inmates sentenced to capital punishment.

The bill was filed in the Kentucky Senate in January by Democrat Sen. Gerald Neal and Republican Sens. Julie Raque Adams and Stephen Meredith.

The bill would “abolish the death penalty and replace it with life imprisonment without parole for inmates presently sentenced to death.”

Currently, 24 states have the death penalty, three have moratoriums imposed to stop them, and 23 plus the District of Columbia have outlawed the death penalty, according to The Death Penalty Information Center.

According to the Kentucky Department of Corrections website, 26 people are currently on death row in the state, including seven who were sentenced in the 1980s. A stay of execution in Kentucky was put into place in 2010.

Kentucky Leaders React

Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said the punishment has a place in society “in limited circumstances,” according to a Louisville ABC affiliate.

“I believe that there are some crimes that are so horrific, and some people that are so dangerous, that merit the existence of the death penalty,” he said, according to the outlet. “So I look forward to hearing that discussion. And the grounds on, on which it’s, it’s based,” he said.

The governor also told the outlet there are potential discussions to be had about the cost of the death penalty versus life in prison.

“Every year, you find one or two cases where someone is exonerated because someone took the time to put their attention on a specific case and found out that it was wrongfully convicted,” said Neal, reported Spectrum News. “It’s not like I have sympathy for those who find themselves in situations who disregard someone else’s life. That’s completely out of the order, but for us to do the same, to me, I think creates duplicity.”

In 2022, lawmakers passed into law an end to the death penalty for those with a documented diagnosis and active symptoms of mental illness at the time of their offense.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told CityBeat when last year’s law passed that there has been a slow shift toward considering a different approach in sentencing people who are severely mentally ill.

“I think there’s a growing awareness around the world that it is not appropriate to subject people who are seriously mentally ill to capital punishment,” Dunham said. “And that’s a view that’s been growing within the United States as well.”

Republican lawmakers at the time called it “a slippery slope that would end capital punishment entirely.”

Kentucky is surrounded by states with and without the death penalty, while the South as a whole contains the majority of states that still have the death penalty in the United States.

Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, and Tennessee all have the death penalty and surround Kentucky—while Illinois, Virginia, and West Virginia all do not. If passed and signed into law, Kentucky would become one of 24 states with no death penalty of any kind.