Kentucky’s early history with the death penalty included many public hangings in the nineteenth century. While outlawed in 1880, public hangings were reinstated in 1920 for rape, and then finally abolished in 1938 after a public hanging reportedly witnessed by over 20,000 people. This execution is the last recorded public execution in the U.S. Kentucky also holds the infamous record for the most executions in one day – July 13, 1928, when seven men were executed by electrocution.
In 1964, Kentucky Governor Ned Breathitt convened a panel of distinguished Kentuckians to study the death penalty and make a recommendation regarding its use. The majority of that panel voted to recommend abolition of the death penalty. Kentucky’s General Assembly did not act on that recommendation and it stayed in place, but went unused, until the Furman ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1972 which struck down several states’ death penalty laws as unconstitutional.
Kentucky lived without the death penalty for another three years until the U. S. Supreme Court’s Gregg decision in 1975. In December that year, Governor Julian Carroll signed a bill passed during a special session of the state legislature reinstating the penalty.
In an effort to limit the effects of racial bias in the application of the death penalty, Kentucky adopted the “Racial Justice Act” in 1998 which allows judges in capital trials to consider whether racial bias played a role in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty.
In 2000, anti-death penalty activists began a more determined push to abolish the death penalty, galvanized by the disturbing execution of Harold McQueen in 1997. For the past two sessions of the General Assembly activists have advocated for passage of legislation to end the death penalty entirely, and to end it for severely mentally ill persons. While not yet successful, the ground work has been laid and there is increasing momentum to do something in the state about this penalty.
CMN State Spotlight – January 2012
“Astute observers believe Kentucky is on the brink of a breakthrough that will advance the cause of abolition significantly. If true, this will help us all.”