TOPEKA — Years working capital murder cases and appeals of the wrongfully convicted led criminal defense lawyer Cheryl Pilate to conclude the government’s willingness to order execution of men and women stood as a potent expression of racism’s grasp on the justice system.
From a front-row seat of repetitious legal dramas, Pilate encountered evidence of a system willing to prey upon minorities and encouraged by corrupted law enforcement officers and prosecutors. She said a broad coalition of the willing, all the way down to corrections officers who volunteer to serve on prison execution units, reinforced this societal failure.
She’s convinced the country’s legal system has been too distorted by centuries of injustice to fairly judge who deserved to live or die.
“The death penalty — it’s like the peak horror,” Pilate said. “It is the reflection of pervasive racism throughout the justice system. And, the justice system is a reflection of society.”
On the latest episode of the Kansas Reflector podcast, Pilate and Beatrice Swoopes, a retired lobbyist for Catholic causes, and Mark McCormick, a staffer with ACLU of Kansas, offered personal and professional arguments in opposition to capital punishment. They shared their thoughts at a conference sponsored by the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty.
Their views were drawn from direct experience with racism and framed by a belief state-sponsored executions couldn’t be defended. In their minds, ending the death penalty would bring the nation a refreshing injection of dignity. Their rejection of capital punishment cannot be separated from the tragedy of America’s long history of Black slavery and the persistence of white supremacy.
Kansas reinstituted a trial court’s option to impose a death sentence in 1994, but no one has been executed in the state since 1965. So far, 10 men in custody of the Kansas Department of Corrections have been ordered to die by legal injection. Seven are white. All are convicted killers. As inevitable appeals claw through the system, they spend most of each day in solitary confinement.
Half of U.S. states have adopted laws forbidding capital punishment or placed a moratorium on executions. In Kansas, however, tough-on-crime politics holds sway. Whenever the idea of repeal surfaces at the Capitol, the testimony from proponents points to millions of dollars in extra costs required of capital cases. They raise moral and religious objections. There’s no way to get around cruelty of strapping someone down and intentionally ending a life, they say. And there are questions about mistakes and corruption as the list of exonerees grows.
Opponents of repeal in Kansas have an easier task. Those favoring status quo can sway opinion by simply mentioning Reginald and Jonathan Carr, John Robinson, James Kahler, Kyle Flack, Frazier Cross, Justin Thurber, Scott Cheever, Sidney Gleason and Gary Kleypas. Collectively, these men condemned to death by Kansas have been found guilty of killing two dozen people.
The Carr brothers shared a sadist’s zeal by murdering five in Wichita. Robinson was convicted of killing three, but the serial killer confessed to five more. Kahler massacred four female members of his family in Burlingame. Flack shot three adults and a toddler. Gleason killed two. Cheever gunned down Greenwood County’s sheriff. Cross, a white supremacist, murdered three at a Jewish retirement center. Kleypas was sentenced to life in prison for a Missouri murder, but was released to Kansas where he killed a Pittsburg State University student. Thurber murdered a pre-pharmacy student on Cowley Community College’s dance team.
At the federal level, the administration of President Donald Trump is engaged in a campaign to speed execution of death-row inmates before surrendering the White House to President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20.
