Kentucky spends $8 million a year on death row inmate

In Kentucky if you are sentenced to death, you will usually

die of natural causes because of systemic problems. This

article details the problems and is an eye-opener.

The Crime and Justice News (http://thecrimereport.org/)

summed it up this way:

Kentucky is spending millions of dollars each year on a

capital-punishment system so ineffective that more death-row

inmates are dying of natural causes than are executed,

says the Louisville Courier-Journal. Since the death

penalty was reinstated nationwide in 1976, Kentucky's

trial courts have sentenced 92 defendants to death.

Only three have been executed; five have died while

their cases were on appeal. Because of Kentucky's

ponderous system, more than one-third of the state's

36 current death-row inmates - 13 in all - have been

there at least two decades. That's a higher percentage

than in every other state except Tennessee, Nevada,

and Idaho, an analysis of information compiled by

the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics finds.

Some 30 other inmates whom Kentucky judges sent

to death row over the past 33 years ultimately have

seen their sentences reduced as the result of appeals,

suggesting widespread flaws at the trial level.

The state Department of Public Advocacy estimates

that Kentucky spends as much as $8 million a year

prosecuting, defending, and incarcerating death-row inmates.