AG candidates favor expanding death penalty

Kansas City, Mo. ? Both candidates for Kansas attorney general favor expanding the number of crimes that can lead to a death penalty conviction.

A 1994 death penalty law lists only seven capital crimes, including the intentional or premeditated killing of a law enforcement officer or killing more than one person as part of a common scheme. The last time the state put someone to death was in 1965.

A 1994 death penalty law lists seven capital crimes, all involving intentional or premeditated killings:

In the commission of kidnapping or aggravated kidnapping if a ransom is intended.Pursuant to a contract.By a jail or prison inmate.Of the victim of rape, criminal sodomy or aggravated criminal sodomy.Of a law enforcement officer.Of more than one person as a part of the same act, or in two or more acts as parts of a common scheme or course of conduct.Of a kidnapped child under the age of 14 if it involves a sex crime.

Chris Biggs, the Democratic candidate, told The Kansas City Star editorial board on Friday that he wanted the law expanded to include other forms of premeditated murder.

Biggs, who lives in Geary County, faces Republican Phill Kline of Shawnee in the attorney general’s race.

Kline also favors expanding the death penalty to include premeditated murder, said Whitney Watson, Kline’s campaign spokesman. As a member of the Kansas House, he voted for legislation that would have expanded the death penalty in 1996. But the bill died, Watson said.

Biggs gave several examples to the editorial board to explain his stance. Someone who kidnaps, rapes and kills an adult could get the death penalty, he said. But if a victim is killed after being kidnapped and fending off a rape, the defendant would not face the death penalty, he said.

“They’ve selected a group of victims they’re going to treat with special consideration,” Biggs said of the Kansas Legislature.

Biggs, the Geary County prosecutor, said he also would propose requiring juries to determine that the defendant was guilty to “a moral certainty,” or beyond all doubt during the sentencing phase of a capital case.