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None of the 62 prisoners on federal death row are from Kentucky, but that could change soon.
None of the 62 prisoners on federal death row are from Kentucky, but that could change soon.
Two Louisville cases — including the Kroger killings and a January murder blamed on a drug ring — are among four that qualify as death eligible in Western Kentucky. Federal prosecutors in the commonwealth have been hesitant to seek the country's ultimate punishment in the past and haven't sent anyone to federal death row during the past three decades.
But there are new prosecutors and decision-makers in place appointed by President Donald Trump.
The man who would oversee Louisville's death penalty prosecutions, Russell Coleman, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky, was appointed by Trump a year ago. He declined to discuss specifics about the cases or his opinions on the death penalty.
Court records show there are currently four cases that could qualify for death penalty trials.
• The January fatal shooting of Vincente Rodriguez Ramirez in Okolona.
Three men are charged in the death: Charles Orlando Cater, Dwain Castle and alleged drug ring leader Javier Humberto Navarro Rodriguez.
• The October double homicide at a Louisville Kroger where two black victims were allegedly targeted because of the white suspect's racial hatred.
Gregory Bush, 51, has been indicted for federal hate crimes after allegedly telling a witness, "whites don't shoot whites," and after a video captured him trying to enter a predominantly black church in Jeffersontown before heading to Kroger. Maurice Stallard, 69, and Vickie Lee Jones, 67, were fatally shot Oct. 24 at the Jeffersontown store.
"Federal, state, and local law enforcement stand united to ensure that Kentuckians can shop, worship, or attend school without the specter of fear," Coleman said in a written statement following the federal charges.
• The slaying of Fort Campbell soldier Sgt. Brittney N. Silvers on the military base at the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
A neighbor who was walking his dog claims he saw the victim's estranged husband, Victor Silvers, shoot her in the head in front of her home. The Clarksville, Tennessee, man is charged with premeditated murder and with shooting the victim's friend, who tried to hide in the bathroom, in the leg.
The soldier, who filed for divorce, previously had gotten a restraining order against her husband.
• The 2017 fatal robbery at La Placita a Hispanic food market in Bowling Green on March 17, 2017
Jose Cruz, 31, a Bowling Green man who had come to the restaurant to pick up his children from his ex-wife, tried to intervene and was killed. Jose Adan Mejia Varela and Jonny Alexander Reyes-Martinez are accused of being inside the business during the armed robbery, with Martinez accused of shooting the victim. They are charged along with three alleged accomplices — Jorge Caballero-Melgar, Estrellita Soto and Lilian Duron.
The three men are accused of fleeing to Tennessee afterward and dividing the $12,000 in stolen money.
The fatal incident is one of at least a dozen robberies at small, privately owned stores across Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.
In federal court, unlike in state court, deciding whether to seek death is a complex and lengthy process. The decision isn't made in Kentucky.
Coleman will send memos to Department of Justice officials in Washington, D.C., detailing the allegations and evidence in the Louisville and Western Kentucky cases. He won't disclose whether he is recommending seeking death in any of the four cases, and those documents will remain sealed.
Department of Justice capital case review committees will review the memos and may ask Coleman to travel to D.C. to answer questions. Their recommendation will be forwarded to the U.S. Attorney General, who makes the ultimate decision on whether to seek the federal death penalty. That decision could fall to Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, but his appointment is being challenged.
Whitaker did release a statement after a federal grand jury indicted the suspect in the Kroger slayings.
"The crimes alleged in this indictment are horrific," he said. "We cannot and will not tolerate violence motivated by racism. We will bring the full force of the law against these and any other alleged hate crimes against fellow Americans of any race."
He didn't specify if that meant seeking a death sentence.
Since the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988, 78 defendants across the nation have been sentenced to die; only three were executed – Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, 33; Texas drug kingpin and murderer Juan Raul Garza, 44; and Louis Jones Jr., 53, who kidnapped a 19-year-old soldier from an Air Force base in Texas before raping and beating her to death with a tire iron.
All were killed by lethal injection at the U.S. Penitentiary Terre Haute in Indiana.
Two Kentucky men, Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks, are on federal death row, but they were sent there by federal juries in South Carolina. The men escaped from a Kentucky jail in Hopkins County in 2002 and terrorized a various victims during a two-week crime spree that culminated with the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 44-year-old woman in South Carolina and the abduction and murder of a 19-year-old college student in West Virginia.
Kerry Harvey, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky, said he decided the death penalty was merited in a few cases.
But no one was sent to death row during his tenure from 2010-2017.
He said once he didn't receive Justice Department approval, another time he reconsidered after learning more facts about the case and another time he decided a plea offer with the defendant forgoing the right to appeal was the best option.
"It is certainly something that weighs on your mind," Harvey said. "It's a heavy responsibility."
The death penalty is used more frequently in state court.
In Kentucky, there have been three executions since the commonwealth reenacted the death penalty at the state level in 1995. In the state system, local top prosecutors — Commonwealth's Attorneys — in each judicial circuit decide whether to seek it.
Currently, there are 30 state prisoners, including one woman, on death row.
"I support the death penalty in theory," Harvey said.
"But historically, a death-eligible defendant is about as likely to die of a lightning strike than to be executed by the federal government."
Source: courier-journal.com, Beth Warren, December 27, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde