FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- Executions in Kentucky could be halted for a year or more if lawmakers form a task force to study how the system works and correct problems with how death penalty cases are handled, legislators said Wednesday.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee said the proposal will likely be dealt with during the current legislative session, but the details of who would be on the task force and how long executions would stop remain unresolved. The task force idea, though, drew the backing of both death penalty supporters and opponents who heard testimony about how 64 percent of death sentences in Kentucky since 1976 have been overturned.
"This is too ... serious to have this many errors in it," Rep. Brent Yonts, D-Greenville, a death penalty supporter and committee member, told The Associated Press. "You don't take people's lives unless you know what you're doing."
The push for a task force came after members of an American Bar Association team presented lawmakers with a summary of a two-year study of Kentucky's capital punishment system. The study found that state or federal courts overturned the sentences or convictions of 50 of the 78 people sent to death row since the penalty was reinstated in Kentucky in 1976. The ABA committee initially returned its report in December and faulted how the state handles the severely mentally ill, the preservation of evidence and a lack of safeguards against executing the innocent.
Rep. Mary Lou Marzian, D-Louisville, pitched the idea of a task force during the committee meeting and said lawmakers can tackle one issue this session by passing a bill prohibiting the state from executing anyone found to be severely mentally ill.
"In order to be sure you do it right," Marzian said of executions, "you should look at it from all the angles."
Mike Bowling, a former state representative from Middlesboro who sponsored Kentucky's lethal injection bill in 1998, said ABA team members backed the idea of a task force and a halt to executions while lawmakers study the issue and consider possible corrections. Bowling said any suspension would likely last about a year.
Gov. Steve Beshear didn't respond directly to the possibility of a task force, but noted that the state is still under a judge's order stopping all executions.
"In the meantime, we will continue to carefully review and study the 400-plus page report provided by the ABA assessment team," Beshear said in a statement.
Attorney General Jack Conway said he appreciates lawmakers being willing to form a task force and hoped any such panel would include a commonwealth's attorney. But he disagrees with halting executions, he said.
"Although I welcome continued review of the ABA's findings, I do not believe it merits a suspension of the death penalty, which disregards trial verdicts, years of judicial review and the families of crime victims seeking justice for their loved ones," he said in a statement.
Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd in 2009 stopped all executions in Kentucky, saying the state didn't have an adequate method of ensuring the mental competency of an inmate once an execution date is set. Shepherd's final ruling in the case is pending. Kentucky has executed three people since 1976, the last in 2008.
In recent years, the Ohio Supreme Court created a task force to study execution in that state, while the Pennsylvania State Senate in December pushed for a similar panel.
Michael Mannheimer, a law professor at Northern Kentucky University and member of the ABA panel, told lawmakers that the system can't be made perfect, but the flaws in Kentucky's system can be corrected to minimize the chance of an innocent or mentally ill person being executed. While perfecting the system isn't realistic, former Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Martin Johnstone said, correcting an errant death sentence isn't possible.
"Everybody's heard the saying that death is different," Johnstone said. "Well, death is different."
Witnesses at the scene say a car pulled up, guys got out, got into an argument with the victim and then started shooting.
