Donna Schneweis, chairwoman of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, says it’s time for Kansas to stop sentencing criminals to be executed after the latest appealed conviction was overturned, the sixth such reversal in six cases before the state’s high court, reports the Associated Press. Schneweis says the odds of repealing the 1994 law are slim, but a growing segment of society is changing its view on capital punishment in the United States. “We think the death penalty fails as a policy,” she says.
Support for executions in the state appears generally lukewarm among the state’s leading politicians, including Gov. Sam Brownback. The last execution in Kansas was in June 1965 by hanging. The latest case to be overturned was announced Aug. 24 when the court struck the conviction of Scott Cheever for the 2005 shooting death of Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels. Cheever admitted to killing the sheriff at a southeast Kansas home but said it wasn’t intentional and that he was under the influence of methamphetamines.