Legal News

Absence of Aggravators: Why Scott Roeder Isn?t Death Penalty Eligible

By Amir Efrati

We’ll be honest. We were a little surprised to hear that Scott Roeder (pictured), the man charged with the first-degree murder of George Tiller, a late-term abortion provider in Kansas, could not be sentenced to death if found guilty, even though Kansas has a death penalty. If convicted of murder, Roeder would face a mandatory life sentence and would not be eligible for parole for at least 25 years.

But the answer why not is pretty simple. To qualify for the death penalty in Kansas, the alleged murder has to fit into one of eight criteria. Such so-called aggravators include: murders that are especially "heinous" or "cruel,” murders committed for financial gain or killings committed in connection with another felony, among other things.

And what about other states? Same thing. Turns out that such a murder — even a high-profile, premeditated killing done for political reasons — likely wouldn't land the killer on death row in most parts of the country.

That kind of killing "is not what people thought of when they were writing death penalty statutes," Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told the Law Blog. "It was about targeting things they feared the most, not the guy next door who shoots an abortion doctor."

The death penalty has been somewhat controversial in Kansas, Dieter said. "The Catholic Church has some influence there and it’s against it," he says. Just 10 — of the almost 3,300 individuals on death-row nationwide — are in Kansas. And as it turns out, Kansas hasn’t had executed anyone since 1965.

But by contrast, California’s legislation is much more open-ended — and partially explains why the state has 678 inmates on death row (Florida is next closest with 402). California has what Dieter calls a “catch-all aggravator” list. The list of punishable-by-death offenses is more than double the length of Kansas’s.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 05, 2009 (boomark / email).