Kentucky's attorney general is asking a judge to dismiss a case that's prevented executions in Kentucky for the past 16 years.

Our Jim Lefler has more in this report.

Capital punishment was paused in 2010 with a Franklin Circuit Court injunction.

If a judge dismisses that case, Attorney General Russell Coleman says it would jump start executions for a dozen Kentucky inmates on death row.

It's time for justice to come for Carrie White, who killed three elderly Kentuckians in a small town grocery store in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.

It's time for Bennie Hodge, who murdered a young U-K sorority student by stabbing her so hard that the blade dug into the floor underneath her body.

Coleman has called on the governor to issue a death warrant for Ralph Baze.

Governor Beshear needs no new law.

He needs no new regulation.

He needs nothing passed by the General Assembly to sign the execution warrant.

In fact, he can do it today.

Baze killed a Powell County sheriff and a deputy sheriff in 1992, but his lawyers have successfully argued that the protocols for lethal injection and dealing with inmates with intellectual disabilities are not up to snuff.

Coleman says those arguments made sense in the past, but that the Kentucky Department of Corrections has new protocols in place.

Supreme court needed to determine whether regulations should control changes in the protocol.

There were big issues, weighty protocol issues to be worked through today behind me.

We were talking about issues such as does execution really mean death?

It's sophistry.

Now we're beyond the big issues.

A state lawmaker and some law enforcement officers agree with the attorney general.

Rep.

He's never disputed his guilt, his involvement, nor showed remorse.

There have been two death warrants signed over the years.

And now it's time for the third.

It's not fun.

We didn't sign up for this, but it's something that the people of the Commonwealth elected us to do.

Just like these men had to go on that day, and we go so that nobody else has to come and do this behind us.

Hopefully, this is the last time the two people have to come in order to get a family for my area justice.

The cost is that people in this Commonwealth question the rule of law question when decades later, with an admission of guilt and no question, no great as to guilt.

Why the jury's decision can't be effectuated.

That's the cost.

The Kentucky Department of Correction says updated execution protocols should be finalized next week.

Franklin Circuit Court Judge Phillip Sheppard will rule on the Commonwealth's motion to dismiss.

He was the judge to issue the initial injunction in 2010 for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Gene Lefler.

Thank you.

June.

Senate Bill 251.

That's before the Kentucky General Assembly now deals with capital punishment.

It would allow execution protocols from the Kentucky Department of Corrections to sidestep oversight.

Republican State Senator Stephen West says this could expedite the next execution.

Other lawmakers, like Republican state Representative James Tipton, have filed bills to abolish the death penalty altogether.