Kentucky AG, a Senate candidate, wants to step up executions

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By Beth Musgrave | Lexington Herald-Leader

FRANKFORT — Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, a U.S. Senate candidate, wants Gov. Steve Beshear to set executive dates for three men on Death Row.

If Beshear sets execution dates for the three, it will double the number of executions in the state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. The last to be executed was Marco Allen Chapman, executed via lethal injection in 2008.

In a statement, Conway said that Ralph Baze Jr., Robert C. Foley and Gregory L. Wilson had exhausted all of their appeals and it was time for the families of their victims to have closure.

"Each has exhausted all of their 'matter of right' appeals in state and federal courts," Conway said, including reviews by the Kentucky Supreme Court and a federal habeas corpus review. "There are no remaining legal impediments to the finality of these death sentences," he said.

Read more at Kentucky.com

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