Wyandotte County judge dismisses death penalty challenge on procedural grounds

TOPEKA — A Wyandotte County District Court judge pointed to flaws in Kansas’ capital punishment law in an opinion that didn’t lead to findings relative to a constitutional challenge because the death penalty was taken off the table for two murder defendants creating legal standing for the case.

Judge Bill Klapper’s opinion delved into economic, fairness and psychological elements of capital punishment and examined claims the death penalty statute was biased against defendants of color, fostered trauma among families of victims who dealt with years of proceedings and promoted expenditure of millions of dollars by prosecutors pursuing a sentence the state hadn’t enforced in 60 years.

The constitutional challenge brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations came to an end once their clients accused of capital crimes no longer faced the ultimate punishment.

“The impossibility of either defendant being subjected to the death penalty causes them to lose their legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the Kansas death penalty as applied to them,” Klapper’s order said.

The ACLU, ACLU of Kansas, the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, Democracy Forward and lawyers from Washington, D.C., law firms filed motions challenging the death penalty on behalf of Antoine Fielder, who was accused of shooting to death Wyandotte County Deputies Theresa King and Patrick Rohrer in June 2018 while being escorted to a court hearing. In exchange for prosecutors withdrawing a request for the death penalty, Fielder entered in December a plea of guilty to two counts of capital murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The second participant in the constitutional challenge was Hugo Villaneuva-Morales, who was accused of killing four people in October 2019 at a bar in Kansas City, Kansas. In February, prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against Villaneuva-Morales in exchange for his waiver of the right to a jury trial. He was found guilty of murder on Wednesday.

Because both men no longer faced the potential of execution, the district court judge didn’t rule on broad constitutional claims. With addition of Fielder and Villaneuva-Morales, the ACLU has represented four clients in legal challenges to the state’s death penalty.

“The evidentiary hearings have consistently exposed uncomfortable truths to state prosecutors, the courts and the public about the deep flaws and injustices embedded in the death penalty system,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project.

On Thursday, Stubbs said judicial issues brought to light in the series of legal challenges should be recognized by lawmakers in Kansas.

“We remain committed to challenging the death penalty on behalf of people facing capital charges in Kansas with the hope that state legislators will end the death penalty and make future legal challenges unnecessary,” she said.

The evidence

In Wyandotte County District Court, testimony portrayed capital punishment as unconstitutional in terms of the right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of equal protection rights associated with race and gender. The legal coalition challenging Kansas’ death penalty law additionally asserted jury selection in capital cases, in which all jurors must be willing to impose a death sentence, was unconstitutional.

Witnesses called on behalf of Fielder and Villaneuva-Morales argued the automatic striking of prospective jurors who didn’t believe execution to be a valid form of punishment was discriminatory against Black people, women and individuals with firmly held religious beliefs.

Klapper’s 15-page opinion summarized evidence offered by half the 13 expert witnesses called by attorneys for the two men accused of murder. The state cross-examined most of those witnesses, but didn’t present testimony. The judge said evidence presented on behalf of the two defendants “was decidedly persuasive and well-reasoned.”

He portrayed race and gender as key elements in how prosecutors decided to pursue the death penalty and how those cases were handled by juries. In Kansas, none of 15 men sentenced to death killed a Black person despite Black males making up more than 30% of homicide victims. White females comprised 20% of homicide victims in Kansas, but cases with white female victims were most likely to lead to a death sentence.

“The factors which distinguish death sentence cases from non-death sentence cases are the race and gender of the victim, and the race and gender of the defendant,” the judge’s opinion said.

Klapper drew from an expert witness for the two men who argued the legal framework for selecting jurors was “so flawed that it does not protect racial biases in jury selection and must be reformed, a fact known to Kansans for years.”

The judge wrote that testimony indicated the “scientific community has found no reliable evidence of the death penalty being a deterrent to homicides.”

‘Painful wounds’

Hearings in the case, which began in October, showed Kansas prosecutors had filed 129 capital murder cases in response to more than 4,000 homicides committed in the state since the state restored the death penalty in 1994. Prosecutors took the next step to provide formal notice the death penalty would be sought in 76 of those cases.

Of 15 men sentenced to death in Kansas, nine remained under sentences of death. Four of them were resentenced to long prison terms, while two died in prison.

“Much more difficult to measure, but most concerning is the impact continual court hearings have on the victims’ families,” Klapper wrote. “The verdict in a capital case resulting in a death sentence is not the end but only the beginning of the appellate process. Most of the Kansas death penalty cases have been pending for more than 15 years and no (inmate) has exhausted their appellate rights.

“How will families of the victims ever begin to heal and attempt the process of recovery, if that is even possible, when the legal system continues to reopen those painful wounds with each new motion?”