There are currently 26 inmates on death row in Kentucky, but when or if they will ever face execution is unclear.

A recent report showed, quote, delays, disparities and costs that some say need to be evaluated.

Our law.

Rogers has more with R.G.

Dunlop, a reporter from Louisville Public Media's Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting.

RG, thank you so much for your time and we appreciate this excellent reporting that you've done on Kentucky's death row system.

Let's talk about the case of Koru Jean.

WHITE He's been on death row close to 44 years for a crime he committed, I believe, when he was 20 years old.

And you open and close your story with him.

Let's talk about this case.

Well, there was a triple murder in the community of Haddix in Bedford County.

He and two juveniles went into the three people store and basically bludgeoned them to death.

It was a brutal murder.

And as I recall, the bodies were in such awful shape that they were put in by they were they couldn't be revealed publicly at their funerals.

They had to be put in body bags.

And after that, Mr. White stood trial, was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death.

All these years later, again, 44 years, he is still basically languishing on death row.

So why has his capital punishment not been carried out?

Well, like many other cases, there are a variety of reasons.

Most of them pertaining to appeals of the conviction.

Basically, anyone who's sentenced to death tries most often tries to avoid being executed.

And that's what Mr. White is doing.

He is contesting some issues that pertain to his trial, and he's also contesting in court issues pertaining to his mental capacity to be executed.

So these delays that we see, it's not a uniquely Kentucky issue.

We see delays in states across the country.

But from what I understand from your report, our delays appear to be the longest.

Well, yes and no.

Inmates on death row in Kentucky have been there.

An average of 26 years, which is longer than for other states.

However, Kentucky also has a relatively small number of inmates on death row, which skews the number a little bit because there are so few of them relative to some other states, which might have several hundred inmates on death row, as opposed to Kentucky's 26.

But still, inmates on death row in Kentucky are on average, they're a long time, 26 years on average, and a massive amount of taxpayer dollars goes into incarceration.

And people might be interested to know it appears to be much more expensive to sentence someone on to death as opposed to giving them life in prison without parole.

Well, it sort of depends what happens after the sentence is imposed.

If that if the sentence is a death sentence and the defendant contests it through the appellate process, then yes, it can be a very prolonged process, as in the case of Mr. White, and a very expensive process, too.

As the appeals are filed, obviously, the defendant and his attorneys and and the trials are expensive and the appeals are expensive and the incarceration is expensive.

And, of course, this is a very controversial topic.

And one thing I think is interesting is the fact that a lot of times in Kentucky, it's not drawn down party lines where people stand on it.

Capital punishment is an acceptable form of sentencing.

And our criminal justice system, is that what you learned in your reporting, in your interviews with legislators?

Well, basically, yes.

However, we only interviewed a few.

But I think based on what other reporting that has been done, there appears to be a trend toward the elimination of the death penalty in Kentucky.

Clearly, we're not there yet.

A bill was introduced in the last legislative session last year to abolish the death penalty.

It got no traction.

There currently is a bill pending in the General Assembly to abolish the death penalty.

It, too, have gotten virtually no traction.

It has only about ten sponsors out of the 100 House members, and it hasn't gotten a hearing yet.

So the the legislators whom I interviewed seem to think that it's not going to happen immediately or maybe in the short term, but that it is eventually coming, coming to an end.

What about the racial disparities that you uncovered?

And then when we talk about that, are we talking about the race of the perpetrator that sentenced to death or are we talking about the race of the victims?

Well, both.

And most of that information is not out of the it comes to the very detailed study by Professor Frank Baumgartner from the University of North Carolina, who did an exhaustive study and the Kentucky Death penalty, published in 2022.

And he basically found out that and reported that black people will be the perpetrators or victims are treated differently.

Statistically, according to his study, than white people.

It seems the general consensus here is the system does need to be exact, amend and potentially overhauled.

Well, I'm not sure it's the general consensus that seems to be the opinion of some people, at least public defenders, who represent death penalty clients.

Dr. Baumgartner, some legislators.

But if there were a consensus to examine this, one might think that something would have happened by now to do that.

And I'm not aware of any any movement in that direction currently.

We appreciate it so much.

Well, thank you for your interest in the subject.

I appreciate you having me on.

RJ, R.J. Dunlop says there have been three executions in Kentucky since the death penalty was reinstated back in 1976, the last one was in 2008.