Failure of Will: Governor Beshear's Injustice to Powell County

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OpEd---(SPA)----Justice, in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, now apparently comes with an expiration date. For the families of Powell County Sheriff Steve Bennett and Deputy Arthur Briscoe, that date has been pushed back for 31 years. Now, Governor Andy Beshear has effectively declared that justice may never arrive at all.

This week, the governor declined to sign the death warrant for Ralph Baze, the man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1994 assassination of these two law enforcement officers.

Let us be clear about what happened. This was not a crime of passion or a robbery gone wrong. Baze, armed and waiting, ambushed Sheriff Bennett and Deputy Briscoe when they arrived to serve a warrant. He executed two men who had sworn an oath to protect their community. A jury of his peers heard the evidence, found him guilty, and handed down the only proper sentence for such a heinous act: death.  

That was in 1994.

For three decades, the families of Bennett and Briscoe, and the entire law enforcement community, have endured a torturous legal process. They have navigated endless appeals and legal challenges, including Baze’s own landmark Supreme Court case questioning the lethal injection protocol—a case he lost. Through it all, they held on to the promise that the judicial system, while slow, would deliver on its word.

Governor Beshear has broken that promise.

The governor’s refusal hides behind a convenient bureaucratic fog. We will hear excuses about the "lack of an approved execution protocol" or the "unavailability of lethal injection drugs." This is nothing but a failure of leadership disguised as a procedural hiccup.

If the protocol is the problem, why hasn't it been fixed? The governor, a former Attorney General, has had years to work with the Department of Corrections and the legislature to establish a workable, legal method. Other states have done so. To claim the process is simply too broken to proceed is and failure of his core duty to execute the laws of the Commonwealth.

This is not an abstract legal debate. It is a profound moral failure.

By refusing to act, Governor Beshear is re-traumatizing the victims' families. He is sending a chilling message to every police officer and deputy in Kentucky: the state will not stand behind you, even when you are murdered in the line of duty. He has allowed one convicted killer to out-maneuver and out-wait our entire system of justice.

This decision is a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in Kentucky, enacted not by the legislature or the people, but by the quiet inaction of one man. It makes a mockery of the jury that delivered the sentence, the judges who upheld it, and the memories of two heroes who died serving us.

Justice delayed is justice denied. For the families of Steve Bennett and Arthur Briscoe, that denial is now absolute.