Wichita — Seven years ago, state Rep. Mike O'Neal declined a request from Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall to propose a change in the state's death penalty law.
Now, the state Supreme Court has ordered re-sentencings for four condemned men, and families of victims will have to revisit the cases. O'Neal knows if there's any one lawmaker who is responsible, it's him.
"The buck stops here," he said.
O'Neal is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and a lawyer. He said he didn't follow Stovall's advice in 1995 when the death penalty law was less than a year old and had been passed after years of debate because he feared lawmakers would saddle the proposal with countless other changes, too.
On Dec. 28, the state Supreme Court vacated Gary Kleypas' death sentence, the first under the state's new law. The ruling prompted Stovall to seek new sentencing trials for Kansas' three other death row inmates at a cost of at least $500,000.
Justices, in a 4-3 vote, said "fundamental fairness" means they had to overturn a provision in the law saying when jurors deadlock on whether a convicted murderer should be executed, the sentence will be death.
In March 1995, Stovall advised O'Neal to propose the opposite so that a defendant would be spared when jurors tie.
No new legislation is needed now because the court changed the law with its ruling, Stovall has said.
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