Opponents of capital punishment say unease with allowing government the power to kill is growing within the libertarian wing of the Kansas Republican Party, and predict it will help with their repeal efforts.

But there's skepticism about the chances of repeal any time soon, in part because of two notorious convicted murderers from Wichita whose death sentence is in doubt.

In early August, the Kansas Republican Liberty Caucus approved a resolution opposing the death penalty, and after a long debate this spring the state Republican Party left support for death sentences out of its official platform.

Mary Sloan, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, said her group is heartened by the developments within the party that controls the Legislature and all statewide offices.

"The death penalty is a broken system that is fiscally unsound and can put innocent life at risk," Sloan said. "It comes as no surprise that more people across the political spectrum are rethinking their support for it."

There are currently 10 people on death row in Kansas, but the state has not executed anyone since reinstating the death penalty in 1994.

Sloan's group, with the help of legislators such as Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City; Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick; and Rep. Steve Becker, R-Buhler, has pushed to repeal the death sentence during recent legislative sessions.

They were granted hearings on repeal in the 2014 session, but the legislation did not come up for floor votes in either chamber.

The anti-death penalty coalition also noted that the Kansas Libertarian Party has come out against the death penalty.

Keen Umbehr, the Libertarian Party's candidate for governor, said he personally opposes the practice, but if he was elected and an execution approached, he "must sign that death warrant" in accordance with state law.

If a repeal bill passed the Legislature, Umbehr said he would sign it, but he said the high-profile capital case of brothers Reginald and Jonathan Carr makes repeal unlikely any time soon.

"With the Carrs' case still in play, I don't think we're going to get a lot of legislators wanting to repeal it," Umbehr said.

Influential Republicans such as Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, and Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt have advocated retaining the death penalty and streamlining the appeals process. Schmidt recently announced he would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review a state court decision to overturn the death sentences of the Carr brothers and another man.

Sloan's group sees recent developments as evidence that the political landscape is shifting their way, but there's bipartisan evidence that repeal is still a tough sell.

Gov. Sam Brownback has previously stated he thinks "we should limit the death penalty to cases only where we cannot protect the society from the individual," but he has not pushed for repeal.

Chris Pumpelly, a spokesman for the gubernatorial campaign of House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, said Davis "supports Kansas' death penalty statute."

Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, said the public shouldn't read too much into the decision to leave support for the death penalty out of the party platform.

Barker said the platform committee recommended that the party take no official position on the subject and rather "make the death penalty a matter of individual conscience," but the state committee never voted on it.

"During the hours of debate on the (entire) recommended platform, the state committee debated the death penalty provision," Barker said via email. "My sense was a provision supporting it would be restored, but for some reason it was not motioned and voted. At the end of the day someone called the question on the (entire) platform as currently amended and that passed. Meeting over. No vote on the death penalty, so the platform as it currently stands is silent on the issue."

Barker emphasized that it was a "marathon debate session" in which the death penalty was just one of many issues discussed and said he expected the party to debate the issue again in January.

The Kansas Republican Liberty Caucus' stance was far more unequivocal.

Chairman Dave Thomas said the group, which has about 30 voting members, voted to pass a resolution supporting life in prison without parole as an alternative to the death penalty because capital punishment was not appealing from a fiscal standpoint or a "liberty standpoint."

"Any time you give the government a power that can be abused, it will or may be abused in the future," Thomas said. "And taking a citizen's life is kind of the ultimate power the government can have."