Idaho lets Kansas fight for death

BOISE – Idaho’s death penalty law has similarities to a Kansas statute that has been declared unconstitutional by that state’s Supreme Court and now is being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But death penalty prosecutors for the Idaho attorney general’s office say they don’t expect the state’s capital punishment law will face a similar challenge. They have no plans at this time to join the Kansas attorney general’s appeal to the nation’s highest court.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a petition from Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline, who is seeking to reverse a 2004 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court that the state’s death penalty statute is unconstitutional because of jury instructions. The law tells juries if aggravating factors and mitigating factors in a murder conviction are equal, then the tie goes to the prosecution and the jury must hand down a death sentence.

In a 4-3 ruling last December, the Kansas Supreme Court found the “tie goes to the state” provision violated the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment protecting due process and equal protection under the law.

In Kansas’ petition to the high court to consider the state’s appeal, attorneys for the state argued that similar death penalty laws in Idaho and Arizona were also in constitutional peril as a result of the decision by the Kansas Supreme Court.

LaMont Anderson, chief of capital litigation for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, said Tuesday he had not yet reviewed the Kansas case but did not believe Idaho’s statute was at risk.

“Idaho’s statute does not address what happens where there is, quote-unquote, ‘a tie,’ ” said Anderson. “Juries are simply told if no mitigating circumstances exist which would make the imposition of the death penalty unjust, then the defendant is sentenced to death.”

The Idaho statute outlines aggravating factors that a judge or jury must consider when weighing a death sentence: utter disregard for human life, heinous or atrocious acts, multiple murders or a previous conviction of another murder, among others.

Those are then weighed individually against the collective mitigating factors in the crime.

“Mitigation is basically anything that reduces a murderer’s culpability, and the factors can get pretty creative,” said Anderson. “Usually it’s mental health, but I’ve seen cases where they’ve brought in testimony that the defendant wasn’t breast-fed enough as a baby.”

Idaho’s death penalty law states if a jury can’t agree whether the mitigating factors make imposition of the death penalty unjust, then the defendant will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

In 1993, the Idaho Supreme Court found the Idaho statute’s requirement that a defendant must prove mitigating circumstances which outweighed aggravating circumstances was constitutional.