Voting ab initio

As a left-handed right-winger, I mostly toe the GOP line. That does not mean I blindly vote the straight ticket.

For President: I could not vote for Hillary Clinton. I could not vote for Donald Trump. Even though he’s far from perfect, I went with Gary Johnson and will leave it at that. Besides, it’s safe to say that Trump will carry Kansas no matter what I do.

For the US senate and US house, I did toe the line for Jerry Moran and Lynn Jenkins.

For State Senate, I once told incumbent Democrat Marci Francisco that the only person I would pick over her was myself – and I’m not running. I made good on what I said. In the statehouse, I went with Republican Ron Ellis. I also crossed over and voted for incumbent Ann Mah in the Board of Education race.

All of the County races are unopposed by Republicans except for one contested race. Linda Buttron will be the county clerk, Delia Heston will be Register of Deeds, Lisa Buerman will be treasurer, Jeff Herrig will be Sheriff. The only contested race for Jefferson County office is County Attorney. I went with Republican Josh Ney.

On a somewhat contentious judicial retention race, I voted to retain all judges except for one: Supreme Court justice Carol Beier. Why did I target that particular one instead of all four targeted justices? I based it on a read of a dissenting opinion in two Capital Murder case. Both cases involved defendants who where convicted, but died in prison before the automatic appeal could be heard. In many states, and at the federal level, if a defendant dies while his appeal is pending, the defendant’s charges are abated ab initio. In layman’s terms, it legally means the defendant is treated like he was never charged. That’s not the case in Kansas. In the two Capital cases, the Supreme Court reduced their review to issues that could have absolutely absolve the defendant. In one of the cases, a lesser conviction was dismissed as duplicative of the Capital Murder conviction. Beier’s dissent in the two cases indicated that she felt that Kansas should adopt abatement ab initio. She was the sole dissenter in both cases.

The doctrine of abatement ab initio seems reasonable at first glance. After all, the Defendant is no longer able to defend himself personally, nor would the state be able to punish him personally. However, the high profile case of Ken Lay showed the weakness – abating the conviction also abates victim restitution. It seems to me that, rather than adopting the concept of abatement in Kansas, other states are leaning towards getting rid of it.


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