LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A bipartisan group of lawmakers has filed legislation to eliminate the death penalty in Kentucky.

Senate Bill 45 is co-sponsored by Sen. Gerald Neal (D, Louisville), Sen. Julie Raque Adams (R, Louisville) and Sen. Stephen Meredith (R, Leitchfield), but it has not yet been assigned to a committee.

“Every year, you find one or two cases where someone is exonerated because someone took the time to put their attention on a specific case and found out that it was wrongfully convicted,” said Neal. 

Besides abolishing the death penalty, under the bill, anyone on death row before the proposed legislation goes into effect would be sentenced to life without parole. 

The Department of Corrections website shows 26 people are currently on death row, including seven who were sentenced in the 1980s.

“It’s not like I have sympathy for those who find themselves in situations who disregard someone else’s life,” said Neal. “That’s completely out of the order, but for us to do the same, to me, I think creates duplicity.”

Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said last week that he looks forward to hearing a discussion on the issue, but that the punishment still has a place in society “in limited circumstances.” 

“I believe that there are some crimes that are so horrific and some people that are so dangerous that merit the existence of the death penalty,” said Beshear.

Last year, lawmakers passed a bill that eliminates the death penalty for defendants with certain serious mental illnesses despite opposition by some Republicans who called it a slippery slope that would end capital punishment entirely. 

According to a 2022 report by Prof. Frank Baumgartner of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, of 82 death sentences imposed in Kentucky since 1975, 41 have been reversed and three have resulted in execution. 

In 2019, the Courier Journal reported a Kentucky judge determined the state’s death penalty protocol was unconstitutional.