More on the Death Penalty per Public Defender Kelson Bohnet

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Radio Active Magazine

A locally produced program where activist groups in the Kansas City area present interviews, commentary, editorials, and other thought provoking content on a weekly basis.

This is the second half of an interview about the death penalty with Kansas public defender Kelson Bohnet recorded December 14, 2024, with Radio Active Magazine regular Craig Lubow. The first half aired December 17.

Bohnet works for the Kansas Public Defender system in their Capital Defense unit and serves on the Board of the Kansas Coalition against the death penalty,1 which hopes that Kansas may soon abolish capital punishment. Bohnet compared Kansas with other states.2 He said that some government actors in Kansas are pushing the death penalty, but that is still a long way off. Kansas does not have the death penalty as a part of its cultural appetite the way that other States do. Missouri, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma “are what we call the active death penalty States.” Bohnet said that what is happening in Missouri “is just a tragedy beyond words” with their Governor and their Attorney General pushing forward executions like an assembly line regardless of case, circumstance, or situation. Bohnet added, “Kansas is not a state that, like Alabama, is going to suffocate a man to death. Kansas is not a state like Missouri that is rushing innocent people like Marcellus Williams3 to be executed.”

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  1. Kansas Coalition against the death penalty (ksabolition.org, accessed 2024-12-15).
  2. Wikipedia, “Capital punishment in the United States” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States).
  3. Marcellus Williams was convicted of the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle. Williams maintained his innocence, and the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney said he had convincing evidence of Williams’ innocence”. However, Governor Parsons dissolved an Inquiry Board created to review the evidence without receiving their report, and the Missouri State Attorney General’s office has a record of dismissing DNA evidence that might exonerate a convict. See Wikipedia, “Murder of Felicia Gayle” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Felicia_Gayle).
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