Former Kansas Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz has several reasons why he thinks the state should abolish the death penalty.
Werholtz, who served as secretary from 2002 to 2010 and returned on an interim basis in 2019, uses his discussions with peers and family members of victims as well as experiences of seeing wrongly convicted people getting exonerated as his guiding points.
“It was something that crystalized my own personal feelings over time,” he told The Capital-Journal. “I was resolved that if it ever came to a point where I would need to order an execution or participate in an execution, I would likely have resigned my position. I just felt that strongly about it.”
While abolition would require legislative action, Werholtz is seeking a more immediate action from Gov. Laura Kelly, his former boss: clemency of Kansas’ death row inmates.
Former corrections professionals urge clemency
Werholtz joined five other former corrections professionals on Sept. 2 in issuing a letter to Gov. Laura Kelly that calls for commuting death sentences.
In the letter, the former officials refer to the death penalty as an inappropriate plea-bargaining tool and a “political ploy.”
“There are good reasons why Kansas has not seen an execution in more than 60 years, why pharmaceutical companies will not allow their products to be used in executions, why most Western democracies have abolished the death penalty, and why opposition to the death penalty continues to grow around our country,” the letter said. “Commuting death sentences would ensure there are no executions in Kansas in the foreseeable future.”
Kansas hasn’t executed a death row inmate since 1965, but the state didn’t have a death penalty for two decades.
The state reinstated the death penalty in 1994 after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Kansas’ and 39 other states’ laws in 1972.
Werholtz and former Kansas Parole Board members Robert Sanders and Marilyn Scafe spoke at a Statehouse press conference prior to delivering the letter to Justin Whitten, Gov. Kelly's chief counsel.
As a former corrections officer, Sanders said he thanks God that he didn’t have to participate in any executions. He spoke about the effect it has on his colleagues from other states.
“The lasting trauma that it has on them, I just can’t put that into words,” he said. “You can imagine someone walking an offender down into the death penalty, or strapping them down, or just being involved in that process and the lasting trauma that has on correctional staff.”
Scafe, who chaired the parole board from 1995 to 2006, noted that clemency doesn’t mean that death row inmates will be eligible for parole.
“There’s never going to be a day set that they are going to be able to be released because of their good behavior, their age or time spent,” she said.
Werholtz worked under Kelly as interim secretary, but he told The Capital-Journal he isn’t sure if his relationship with the governor would help.
“She has many, many things she has to consider,” he said. “I don’t know what will factor into her decision. I would hope my voice would have some influence, but I couldn’t tell you whether it will or not.”
Five clemency applications still pending after multiple denials
Gov. Kelly denied three clemency requests this summer.
In July, the governor denied requests from Reginald Carr, 48, and Jonathan Carr, 46, who engaged in a weeklong crime spree often referred to as the “Wichita Massacre” in 2000, ultimately killing five people.
The governor’s denial of the Carr brothers came about an hour before faith leaders, like the correction officials on Sept. 2, delivered letters to Kelly.
The governor denied John Robinson’s request in June. Robinson, 82, was sentenced to death in January 2003 for the murders of Izabela Lewicka and Suzette Trouten, who were found in barrels on his Linn County property.
In total, he’s linked to the killings of seven women and a teenage girl in Kansas and Missouri.
The governor’s office confirmed that Kelly has five more applications from the following inmates:
- Kyle Flack, 41 (sentenced in May 2016 for killing three adults and a toddler on a Franklin County farm in 2023).
- James Kahler, 63 (sentenced in October 2011 for killing his estranged wife, two daughters and his wife’s grandmother in Burlingame in 2009).
- Justin Thurber, 43 (sentenced in March 2009 for the abduction and murder of a 19-year-old Cowley County Community College student in 2007).
- Scott Cheever, 45 (sentenced in January 2008 for killing a Greenwood County sheriff in 2005).
- Sidney Gleason, 47 (sentenced in August 2006 for killing two people, including a potential robbery witness, in 2004).
Attorney General Kris Kobach in June called for Kelly to reject the clemency applications after eight inmates initiated the clemency process in May.
“These clemency requests are an outrage to the victims of these killers and all Kansans. A jury sentenced them to death,” Kobach said in a news release. “I urge Gov. Kelly to reject clemency and deliver long-overdue justice for the families. As attorney general, I support the death penalty and oppose any effort to set aside the jurors’ decisions to impose this penalty.”
Kobach in 2024 pushed for the Legislature to add hypoxia — the forced inhalation of pure nitrogen gas — as an execution method in Kansas. He said pharmaceutical manufacturers have made it harder to obtain drugs for lethal injection, but the bill didn’t make it out of the House Judiciary Committee after a hearing.
Out of the state’s nine death row inmates, Gary Kleypas, 70, is the only one who doesn’t have a pending or denied clemency application.
Kleypas was sentenced in December 2008 for raping and killing a 20-year-old Pittsburg State student in 1996.
State law doesn’t set a deadline for a governor to act on a clemency application.
Source: cjonline.com, Bryan Richardson, September 2, 2026
"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
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