Kansas Supreme Court Rules that Death Penalty Does Not Violate State Constitution’s ‘Inalienable’ Right to Life
The Kansas Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penalty against 2 death-row prisoners’ challenges that capital punishment violates the “inalienable” right to life enshrined in the Kansas state constitution. In separate decisions rendered in the cases of brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr on January 21, 2022, the court held that the right to life guaranteed in Section 1 of the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights “is not absolute or nonforfeitable” and is forfeited “once a defendant has been convicted of capital murder beyond reasonable doubt.” The court found that numerous constitutional violations had occurred in the brothers’ joint trial in 2002 but affirmed their convictions and death sentences nonetheless, ruling that each of the violations constituted “harmless error” and cumulatively did not affect “the jury’s ultimate conclusion regarding the weight of the aggravating and mitigating circumstances, i.e., the death sentence verdict.” The court had previously overturned...