(WKYT) – The Kentucky Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in two separate death penalty cases, with attorneys for both inmates contending they did not receive effective representation during their penalty phases.
The cases center on death row inmates David Sanders and David Matthews. Sanders was convicted of murdering two people at a Madison County store in 1987. Matthews was convicted in a 1981 Louisville double murder. Both were sentenced to death.
Sanders case
The basis for Sanders’ argument is that evidence of him being kept as a prisoner in his own home as a child was not presented to jurors during his 1987 penalty phase, according to court filings. Those filings also state he was forced to live in a basement without electricity or running water and was repeatedly beaten.
Attorney Joseph Perkovich, representing Sanders, said the argument requires “the extraordinary confluence of events of ineffectiveness with 1142 counsel and underneath that, ineffectiveness with trial counsel in a substantial claim.”
Federal precedent at issue
Recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court form the basis for the arguments before Kentucky’s highest court.
Perkovich said his clients have been “pressing those cases for 10 years in the federal courts struggling quite frankly to get a merit’s determination on the ultimate trial’s ineffectiveness claim.”
Christopher Henry, representing the attorney general, argued the inmates “ask this court to adopt a federal habeas rule without the safeguards in place for federal habeas proceedings.” He also said “the truth seeking process is completely subverted when litigants are permitted to raise piece-meal litigation over the course of approximately 40 years.”
Background
No one has been executed in Kentucky since 2008. The attorney general has argued for executions to resume, but legal challenges remain, including over the chemical cocktail used in lethal injections.
The justices will review the arguments and issue a ruling at a later date.