Capital Punishment Vigils

By Rick Howlett

Eddyville, KY – Unless there's a last minute stay of execution, 37-year-old Marco Allen Chapman will die by lethal injection Friday evening at the Kentucky State Penitentiary. Chapman is on death row for killing two Northern Kentucky children in 2002. Opponents of capital punishment have planned a series of vigils across the state to speak out against the execution. Mark Meade with the Kentucky Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty says his group will have nine such events.

"In a recent poll, two thirds of Kentuckians chose other sentences such as life in prison without parole or other sentencing options over the death penalty. So we think as a civil society there are other options other than modeling violence." Chapman would be the third person executed in Kentucky since the death penalty was restored in 1976.