KANSAS CITY, Kansas – Lawyers and experts from across the country packed into a stuffy courtroom at the Wyandotte County District on Monday for the death penalty hearing.

National legal advocacy groups have launched a series of hearings to argue that the way the death penalty is administered in Kansas is unconstitutional.

This is one of the oldest suit of its kind This is a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a legal advocacy group that is joined by the Kansas Death Penalty Unit and the law firms of Hogan Lovells and Ali & Lockwood.

They filed separate lawsuits against Hugo Villanueva-Morales, who is accused of killing several people in a bar attack, and Antoine Fielder, who is accused of killing several people in a bar attack. shooting and killing Two police officers in Kansas City, Kansas, in 2018. He was executed last month in neighboring Missouri Marcellus Williamsanother Black man.

Critics have long argued that the death penalty is inhumane, expensive and ineffective at deterring crime. Kansas one of 27 states Although the last state execution here was in 1965, the practice is still legal.

Plaintiffs are now weighing arguments against qualification of death, a rule that requires anyone serving on a death penalty jury to believe that state execution is a valid form of punishment.

Megan Byrne, a staff attorney at the ACLU, said in an interview that black people are excluded from capital juries at higher rates, in part because of the nature of death.

This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of racial bias in capital cases, Byrne said.

“Capital disqualification leads to juries not being diverse, which leads to a disproportionate number of Black and brown people being convicted, which also fuels the understandable skepticism that Black and brown communities can have about the process — which will result in them being kicked off juries. And that “It’s really a feedback loop that needs to be broken,” he said.

Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said the plaintiffs brought the case to court prematurely. None of the defendants has yet been tried in the death penalty case or faced a potentially biased jury.

Still, Byrne said he hopes the Wyandotte County District Attorney will drop the death penalty charges against the defendants and appoint a committee to investigate his findings on the death penalty.

If that doesn’t happen, plaintiffs can continue their lawsuit until the case reaches the Kansas Supreme Court.

The state’s highest court had previously refused to impose the death penalty. But the ACLU and its partners hope that a new approach focused on racist consequences and the nature of death, supported by recent studies in Kansas, could tip the scales.

2022 questionnaire A study in Sedgwick County, Kansas, estimated that black participants were 50% more likely to be disqualified from a capitol jury than their white counterparts. The ACLU says women and religious people are also excluded at higher rates.

Alex Valdez, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project, hopes to integrate scientific evidence with: declining approval The increasing popularity of the death penalty in the American public will help influence Judge Bill Klapper, who is presiding over the case.

“This puts Judge Klapper in a very unique position where he is the first judge to actually hear the full detailed history of the evidence we presented,” Valdez said.

court summaries He points out that similar allegations of racial bias on the death penalty in Connecticut and Washington state have recently been successful in cases that ended the practice.

Carol Steiker, a subject matter expert at Harvard Law School, was the first witness to testify on behalf of the ACLU in Kansas. The evidence presented in this state could support similar efforts elsewhere, he said.

“When one state abolishes the death penalty, it makes it easier for other states to do so,” he said.

Zane Irwin covers politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at: [email protected].

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