News & Commentary

In an unprecedented evidentiary hearing, the court will consider a critical question: If the death penalty is racially discriminatory, arbitrary, and serves no valid public safety purpose, does it violate the Kansas Constitution?

The death penalty goes on trial today in Kansas. The ACLU argues that a correct reading of the Kansas Constitution would throw out capital punishment in the state. As Frank Morris of member station KCUR reports, the multiday hearing is challenging the death penalty in a new light.

She said he accepted the speeding ticket from KHP, but didn’t believe he should drive away while Schulte peppered him with additional questions. The recording revealed Schulte scolded Shaw for driving too fast and not pulling over quickly. It also confirmed Schulte performed the trooper two-step.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is using a Wichita murder case to fight the Kansas death penalty law, which it believes is unconstitutional. On Monday, Feb. 6, a Sedgwick County District Court judge will begin hearing the case.

In a little more than a week, a challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to the death penalty in Kansas will go before a Sedgwick County judge. Attorneys for the ACLU are making the case that the use of the death penalty is discriminatory and doesn’t serve its punitive purpose.

The ACLU of Kansas brought attention to a bill that proposes “proposes an old-fashioned literacy test, with a curriculum that includes the very Constitution bills like this one contradict, before individuals can exit probation, fully reenter community, or vote.”

Kansas ACLU policy director Aileen Berquist said runoff elections discouraged voter engagement and were based on discriminatory practices that began in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Black voters.

The past two years have been the deadliest for transgender people in recent history, in large part due to the rapidly increasing number of legislative attacks against trans peoples’ rights and the resurgence of demeaning and harmful anti-trans rhetoric in our communities. Kansas is no exception.

“This is an extremely harmful and antagonistic bill that would ban medically necessary, safe, and evidence-based medical care, and lead to negative mental and physical health outcomes for both cisgender and transgender Kansans,” said ACLU legal fellow D.C. Hiegert.