Death penalty opponents seek reform in Ky

FRANKFORT, Ky. – Kirk Bloodsworth still remembers prison guards taunting him about the gas chamber as he sat on death row for the rape and murder of a 9-year-old Maryland girl — a crime he didn't commit.

"Think of it like a hog to slaughter," he said. "It's the worst, most painful thing I've ever endured in my life. No man or woman should face that ever."

Bloodsworth, the first death row inmate in the country to be exonerated through DNA evidence, spoke out Wednesday on legislation before the 2015 General Assembly that would abolish the death penalty in Kentucky.

Similar measures have died for years in the state legislature. But two supporters — Democrat Sen. Gerald Neal and Republican Rep. David Floyd — say they are seeing a gradual shift in attitudes among lawmakers, including conservatives.

Cost is one of the key arguments that has helped win over skeptics in recent years, they say.

Floyd said Kentucky spent around $400 million prosecuting and defending death penalty cases since the state reinstated the sentence in 1976. During that time, only three prisoners were executed.

"We believe that strictly on the bases of costs, life without parole makes more sense," Floyd said, estimating that the change could cut cost by 80 percent.

Neal, who has served in the Senate since 1989, said the cost argument crosses all political lines in Frankfort and that he now hears more interest in ending the penalty than ever before.

Still, legislation continues to face steep hurdles in both the Democratic-led House and GOP Senate. Similar bills never even left committee last year, and it's unclear if they will get a hearing in 2015.

Bloodsworth said abolishing the death penalty was also a tough battle in Maryland, where lawmakers did away with the sentence in 2015. But he called executions of innocent prisons one of the greatest social injustices of our time.

"You can free a man or woman from prison, but you cannot free them from the grave," he said.

After a two-week trial in 1985, Bloodsworth served more than eight years in prison, including two years on death row.

An honorable discharged marine and 23-year-old commercial fisherman at the time, Bloodsworth had no criminal record when he was arrested. But he also couldn't afford a defense attorney.

His mother passed away just five months before DNA testing from the crime scene proved his innocence.

Bloodsworth said authorities finally caught the true killer about 10 years after he was exonerated. But he argued against applying the death penalty in the case.

"He was not given the death penalty under my request because he has to live with what he's done in a cell that can contain him and his mind for the rest of his life," he said.

Kentucky last executed an inmate in 2008. Thirty-three inmates remain on death row today.

Reporter Mike Wynn can be reached at (502) 875-5136. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeWynn_CJ.