Another challenge to prosecutors’ capital discretion
This local article from Kentucky discusses another new effort to challenge the death penalty by attacking the broad discretion exercised by prosecutors in capital cases:
The most recent possible challenge to Kentucky’s death penalty came in the form of a motion in Hardin Circuit Court earlier this month to have Kentucky’s death penalty ruled unconstitutional. Attorney Vince Yustas, who represents convicted murderer Michael St. Clair, said his argument against the death penalty never has been made in Kentucky. He claims commonwealth’s attorneys across the state have “unbridled discretion” when deciding whether to pursue the death penalty. “Whether or not to seek the death penalty rests entirely in the hands of individual commonwealth’s attorneys,” Yustas said in a memorandum filed Aug. 20 in Hardin Circuit Court.
As detailed in posts linked below, similar arguments have been advanced recently in a number of other settings: