Yes, Kansas still has the death penalty, but the state has not carried out an execution since 1965 and no one sentenced under its current capital punishment law has ever been put to death. That law took effect on July 1, 1994, and reserves a possible death sentence for a single, narrowly defined offense: capital murder. Nine people are currently under a death sentence in Kansas. Fifteen have been sentenced since 1994; six of those sentences were later overturned or vacated.
What Crimes Can Bring a Death Sentence
Only capital murder is death-eligible in Kansas. Ordinary first-degree murder, however serious, is not. Capital murder is an intentional, premeditated killing that falls into one of seven categories defined by statute:1FindLaw. Kansas Code 21-5401 – Capital Murder
- Killing a victim during a kidnapping committed for ransom.
- Killing under a contract or agreement to kill.
- Killing committed by someone confined in a state prison, community correctional facility, or jail, or in the custody of a correctional officer.
- Killing during or after a rape or criminal sodomy, or an attempt of either.
- Intentionally killing a law enforcement officer.
- Killing more than one person in the same act, related acts, or a common scheme.
- Killing a child under 14 during a kidnapping committed with the intent to commit a sex offense against the child.
If someone is convicted of capital murder and the prosecution does not seek or obtain a death sentence, the default punishment is life in prison without the possibility of parole.2FindLaw. Kansas Code 21-6620 – Sentencing to Life Without Parole
How a Death Sentence Is Decided
A capital murder conviction does not automatically produce a death sentence. The prosecution has to file a motion asking for one, and if it does, the trial judge holds a separate sentencing proceeding in front of the same jury that returned the conviction.3Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 21-6617
At that proceeding, the state must prove at least one aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt. Kansas law limits aggravators to a specific list that includes a prior felony conviction involving serious bodily harm or death, knowingly creating a great risk of death to more than one person, killing for money, hiring someone else to commit the crime, killing to avoid arrest or prosecution, killing in an especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel manner, committing the crime while serving a felony sentence, and killing a witness because of that person’s role in a criminal case.4Justia Law. Kansas Code 21-6624 – Aggravating Circumstances
The defense then presents mitigating circumstances, which are reasons the jury should choose life over death. The statute lists several examples, including no significant prior criminal history, extreme emotional disturbance, and a relatively minor role in the crime, but the defense is not confined to that list.5Justia Law. Kansas Code 21-6625 – Mitigating Circumstances
The jury weighs the two sides. A death sentence requires a unanimous finding that aggravating circumstances exist and are not outweighed by mitigating ones. If a single juror disagrees, or the jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict after reasonable deliberation, the judge dismisses the jury and imposes life without parole. Any doubt defaults to a life sentence.
Who Cannot Be Sentenced to Death
Two federal constitutional rules limit who is eligible for a death sentence in Kansas. Under Roper v. Simmons, the Eighth Amendment forbids executing anyone who committed the crime before turning 18.6Justia. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) Under Atkins v. Virginia, executing a person with an intellectual disability is also unconstitutional, though each state sets its own procedures for determining disability.7Justia. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002)
How Executions Would Be Carried Out
Lethal injection is the only authorized method of execution in Kansas. The secretary of corrections chooses the substances, which must cause death “in a swift and humane manner,” and the secretary of health and environment must certify them before use. The identities of executioners and anyone assisting are kept confidential by statute.8Kansas Office of Revisor of Statutes. Kansas Code 22-4001 – Death Penalty, How Executed
Inmates under a death sentence are housed at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. Kansas does not run a separate death row unit. The execution chamber is at Lansing Correctional Facility, and a condemned inmate would be transferred there if an execution were scheduled. Because no execution has taken place under the 1994 law, none of those procedures has ever been activated.
Why No One Has Been Executed Under the Current Law
The statute itself has survived its biggest constitutional test. In 2004 the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the sentencing provision, holding that it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by allowing a death sentence when aggravating and mitigating circumstances were in equal balance. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed in Kansas v. Marsh in 2006 and upheld the statute.9Legal Information Institute. Kansas v. Marsh Kansas juries may impose death even when the evidence on aggravating and mitigating factors is evenly balanced.
Abolition bills have been introduced in the legislature repeatedly and have not passed. The most recent, Senate Bill 211, was introduced in February 2023 and would have replaced capital murder with a new “aggravated murder” offense carrying life without parole. The bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee and died there in April 2024 without a floor vote.10Kansas State Legislature. SB 211
Cost is a recurring theme in that debate. A 2014 report by the Kansas Judicial Council’s Death Penalty Advisory Committee found that defense costs in capital trials averaged about $396,000 per case, compared with roughly $99,000 for first-degree murder cases where death was not sought. Court costs ran about $72,500 for capital cases versus $21,500 for non-capital ones, and housing a death-sentenced inmate cost about $49,400 a year, roughly double the cost of holding a prisoner in the general population. Kansas Supreme Court justices estimated they spent twenty times more hours on death penalty appeals than on non-capital ones. Those numbers help explain why the death penalty remains a live political question in a state that has not used it in more than sixty years.