Kentucky does have the death penalty on the books, but no one has been executed in the state since 2008, and a court injunction has blocked all executions since 2010. Capital punishment remains a legally authorized sentence for certain murders and kidnappings, and roughly 25 people sit on Kentucky’s death row as of early 2026. Whether executions will resume depends on ongoing litigation over the state’s lethal injection protocol.
Why No One Is Being Executed Right Now
The last execution in Kentucky was Marco Allen Chapman’s lethal injection in November 2008. Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to resume capital punishment in the 1970s, Kentucky has carried out only three executions total.
In 2010, the Franklin County Circuit Court issued an injunction halting executions after challenges to the state’s protocol. The challenges raised, among other issues, the absence of a single-drug lethal injection option and inadequate procedures for screening prisoners with intellectual disabilities. In 2019, a Franklin Circuit Court judge again found the protocol unconstitutional and extended the injunction.
After the Kentucky Department of Corrections revised portions of the protocol in early 2024, Attorney General Russell Coleman asked the Franklin County court to lift the injunction. The trial court denied the request, and in October 2024 the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed that denial. The injunction remains in place, and the underlying disputes continue to move through the courts.
Crimes That Can Carry a Death Sentence
Only two crimes qualify as capital offenses in Kentucky: murder and certain forms of kidnapping.
Murder under Kentucky law means intentionally causing someone’s death, or engaging in conduct so reckless that it creates a grave risk of death and someone dies as a result.1Justia Law. Kentucky Code 507.020 – Murder
Kidnapping becomes a capital offense when the victim is not released alive, or when the victim is released alive but later dies because of serious injuries suffered during the kidnapping, because they were not released in a safe place, or because they were released under circumstances intended or known to lead to their death.2Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Code 509.040 – Kidnapping
A charge alone does not put the death penalty on the table. Prosecutors must also pursue it, and the case must involve at least one statutory aggravating factor.
What Must Be Proven for a Death Sentence
A Kentucky capital case uses a two-phase trial. The first phase decides guilt. If the jury convicts on a capital charge, a separate sentencing hearing follows, where both sides present evidence about aggravating and mitigating factors.3Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Code 532.025 – Presentence Hearings, Aggravating or Mitigating Circumstances
The prosecution has to prove at least one aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt. Those include:
- A prior conviction for a capital offense or a felony involving violence.
- A killing committed during an arson, robbery, burglary, rape, or kidnapping.
- Intentionally causing the death of more than one person.
- Knowingly creating a great risk of death to more than one person in a public place.
- A killing committed for hire, or hiring someone else to commit it.
The defense may present mitigating circumstances, which do not have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Statutory examples include extreme emotional disturbance, no significant criminal history, being a minor participant or acting under another’s domination, and the defendant’s age or mental capacity at the time of the offense. Jurors may also weigh non-statutory mitigation such as childhood trauma, military service, or mental health history.
The jury’s death verdict must be unanimous. A single dissenting juror takes death off the table, and if the jury does not recommend death, the judge cannot override that decision. When the jury does recommend death, it must identify in writing which aggravating circumstances it found proven.
The possible sentences for a capital conviction are death, life without parole, life without parole for at least 25 years, life with the possibility of parole, or a prison term of 20 to 50 years.4Justia Law. Kentucky Code 532.030 – Authorized Dispositions Generally
Who Cannot Be Executed in Kentucky
Three categories of defendants are categorically excluded from the death penalty, no matter how serious the crime.
People Under 18 at the Time of the Crime
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that executing anyone who was under 18 when the offense occurred violates the Eighth Amendment. The rule applies in Kentucky and every other state.5Justia Law. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005)
People With Serious Intellectual Disability
Kentucky has barred the execution of people with intellectual disabilities since 1990, more than a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court imposed a nationwide ban. A person found to have a serious intellectual disability cannot be executed but may still receive any other sentence authorized for a capital offense, including life without parole.6Justia Law. Kentucky Code 532.140 – Offender With a Serious Intellectual Disability Not Subject to Execution
People With Serious Mental Illness
In April 2022, Kentucky added serious mental illness as a bar to execution. A defendant cannot be sentenced to death if, at the time of the offense, they had active symptoms and a documented history of a qualifying condition such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, or delusional disorder. The diagnosis cannot rest only on repeated criminal conduct or the effects of voluntary substance use. The protection applies to trials that began after the law’s effective date of April 8, 2022.7Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. House Bill 269 – 2022 Regular Session8Bureau of Justice Statistics. Capital Punishment, 2022 – Status of the Death Penalty
How Executions Are Carried Out
Kentucky’s method of execution is lethal injection. The statute calls for a continuous intravenous injection of a substance or combination of substances sufficient to cause death, continued until the prisoner is dead. Prisoners sentenced to death before March 31, 1998, may choose electrocution instead. If they do not make that choice at least 20 days before a scheduled execution, the method defaults to lethal injection.9Kentucky Legislative Research Commission. Kentucky Code 431.220 – Execution of Death Sentence
The Governor’s Clemency Power
Kentucky’s governor has sole authority to grant clemency in a death penalty case. There is no clemency board whose recommendation is required first. The governor can commute a death sentence to life in prison or issue a full pardon independently, and can do so at any time. Governors rarely exercise this power in capital cases.
One boundary worth knowing: the state injunction only applies to Kentucky death sentences. The federal government can still seek the death penalty for federal crimes committed within Kentucky, and a federal capital case follows its own procedures and appeals path.