Wyandotte County slaying of 4 people prompts constitutional challenge

TOPEKA — A long-shot constitutional challenge to Kansas’ death penalty unfolding in preliminary court proceedings for a man charged in the death of four people at a Wyandotte County bar centers on claims the state’s process of jury selection is racially biased in favor of executions.

In an unusual court proceeding that began in October, a coalition of attorneys that included counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union asserted the law should be struck down because the practice of jury selection in capital cases dictated prospective jurors had to be willing to impose the death penalty to serve. They argued the system for excluding certain potential jurors disproportionately discriminated against Black people, women and people of faith more likely to oppose capital punishment.

Their objective of pretrial wrangling is to use the 2019 murder case against Hugo Villanueva, who was charged in the shooting outside Tequila KC Bar in Kansas City, Kansas, to convince Wyandotte County District Court Judge Bill Klapper to declare application of the state’s death penalty unconstitutional.

Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said more than a dozen expert witnesses outlined for the judge reasons the death penalty in Kansas violated the Kansas Constitution.

“Every step of the capital process is rife with racism and error, from who gets charged to who sits on capital juries,” Stubbs said. “The expert testimony has conclusively proved what we have long known to be true: If you are charged with capital murder, you are effectively denied your constitutional right to a fair trial.”

No quick decision

Klapper, a 2013 appointee of Republican Gov. Sam Brownback, didn’t issue a decision Wednesday following closing arguments by Villanueva’s lawyers regarding the “death qualification process” applicable to juries in capital murder cases.

The court granted Wyandotte County prosecutors several weeks to submit written closing arguments. Villanueva’s attorneys would be given an opportunity to respond to the filing by District Attorney Mark Dupree’s office.

Those killed in the October 2019 shooting allegedly involving Villanueva were Alfredo Calderon Jr., 29; Everardo Meza, 29; Francisco Garcia Anaya, 34; and Martin Rodriguez-Gonzalez, 58. Five people were wounded. Villanueva’s trial is scheduled for 2026.

In 2022, the Kansas Supreme Court rejected arguments state law on jury selection in capital punishment trials was constitutional as written. The justices at that time didn’t resolve questions about whether implementation of the law resulted in racial bias when selecting juries.

The Kansas Senate 15 years ago declined to advance — on a 20-20 vote — a bill that would have converted all Kansas capital punishment sentences to life without an opportunity for parole. Proponents of the bill said the death penalty conflicted with ideas that all life was sacred, while others said capital punishment didn’t serve a deterrent purpose.

Despite reimposition of the death penalty in 1994, Kansas hasn’t executed anyone since 1965. George York and James Latham werethe last to be executed — in a double hanging — for the 1961 murder of Otto Ziegler, 62, in Wallace, Kansas.

The testimony

In the current Wyandotte County case, attorneys with ACLU of Kansas, the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit, Hogan Lovells, Democracy Forward, and Ali & Lockwood worked through a roster of witnesses offering insights into why they believed the state’s jury-selection process undermined fundamental rights.

Mona Lynch, a professor of criminology at University of California-Santa Cruz, said results of studies in Sedgwick and Wyandotte counties reinforced what national research demonstrated about death qualificiation standards for juries.

Black prospective jurors were significantly more likely to oppose the death penalty and distrust the criminal justice system, Lynch said. And, she said, Black individuals were more likely to be excluded from a jury for opposition to the death penalty. The result was configuration was juries biased in favor of a death sentence, Lynch said.

The distortion of juries has been compounded by discriminatory use of peremptory strikes by lawyers in jury selection, said Elisabeth Semel, a professor of law at University of California-Berkeley.

Frank Baumgartner, a professor of political science at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said a statewide study of Kansas showed death sentences were sought more often when the victim was white or female. A separate analysis of Wyandotte County cases showed the race of victims had an influence on charging decisions by prosecutors, said Brent Never of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

‘Life and death’

Stuart Swetland, president of Donnelly College in Kansas City, Kansas, testified about the jury system in terms of his religious perspective.

“In death penalty trials across the country,” he said, “people like me are excluded from serving on capital juries simply because of our faith. This exclusion undermines the principle of a jury as the conscience of the community and silences a large segment of the population in critical decisions about life and death.”

Carol Steiker, a law professor at Harvard University, said researchers had concluded 4% of capital murder cases in the United States potentially resulted in mistakes based on an extrapolation from the known number of people exonerated off death row.

“If someone said one in 25 airplanes will crash, no one would fly,” she said. “And, yet, we accept the fact that one in 25 people convicted of a capital crime are innocent. It is clear that the American death penalty is irretrievably broken. It cannot be fixed.”

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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