ACLU argues to overturn Kansas’ death penalty based on 2 Wyandotte County murder cases
Three experts in the fields of history and law testified Monday in the Wyandotte County Courthouse to bolster a case that Kansas’ death penalty is inherently unfair and racially biased.
The American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, is intervening in two capital murder cases underway in Wyandotte County, challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty as a form of punishment. Kansas has nine prisoners on death row but has not performed an execution since 1965.
The legal intervention is tied to the criminal cases of Antoine R. Fielder, a 36-year-old Black man on trial for killing two sheriff’s deputies, and Hugo Villanueva, a 35-year-old Hispanic man accused in a shooting outside a Kansas City, Kansas, bar that left four dead. Both men appeared in court Monday.
Among the chief points raised in the ACLU’s argument is the method by which jurors are selected, a process known as “death qualification.”
Lawyers say the process produces skewed juries that are more often made up of white residents. Meanwhile, the arbitrary application of capital charges disproportionately harms Black defendants, they argue.
Further, the lawyers say, Black residents are statistically less likely to support the death penalty — and be ruled out of jury participation during death qualification — in part because of the legacy of lynch mobs and police officers killing Black Americans.
Called first to the witness stand was Carol Steiker, a Harvard Law School professor who has penned reports and books on the subject of the death penalty.
Steiker pointed to two recurring problems in capital cases of highest concern: racism and innocence.
Studies have shown jurors are often “profoundly confused” about what they should be doing during capital trials, Steiker said. She said the complex concepts are often tough for her own law students to understand, saying the average person with no legal training is often overwhelmed.
Steiker pointed to a statistic that one in 25 criminal defendants are likely innocent, calling that estimate a conservative one.
“If you said 1 in 25 planes will crash, no one would fly,” she said.
Testifying to the history of racism in Kansas were Shawn Alexander, an African-American Studies professor at the University of Kansas, and Brent Campney, a professor at the University of Texas.
Alexander discussed the long history of racism in government and politics within Kansas dating back to the Civil War era. Despite some of Kansas’ rosy reputation that came with being a free state, and the early settlement of Quindaro in Wyandotte County, racist practices like segregation are part of the state’s “legacy,” he said.
Campney researched and prepared a report for the ACLU, presented in court Monday, that found dozens of cases of racially motivated killings of Black men, sometimes by white mobs with police support, in Kansas between 1860 and 1930.
The hearing Monday is the first in a weeklong series the ACLU will present for its case against the death penalty. Closing arguments are expected in January following the conclusion of a report and testimony by a final expert witness.
The ACLU has within the past few years become involved in the cases of two other Kansas men facing death row. In both, district attorneys took the death penalty off the table.
