Illinois Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty - Gov. Now Decides Its Fate

(I haven't had time to write my own article on this so I'm sourcing one. Sorry - it's pretty long)


Source: The Chicago Tribune, Jan 11th 2011

SPRINGFIELD — — Gov. Pat Quinn now has to decide the fate of the death penalty in Illinois, a state whose troubling record of condemning innocent men to death row put it at the center of the national debate over capital punishment.

The Democratic-led Senate on Tuesday approved legislation to end the death penalty in Illinois by a vote of 35-22, with two senators voting present. The House approved the measure a week earlier, and now it's up to Quinn.

Quinn's staff on Tuesday said only that he would review the bill. During the fall campaign, the Democratic governor said he supports "capital punishment when applied carefully and fairly."

But Quinn also backed the moratorium on executions put in place 10 years ago by Republican Gov. George Ryan, who in 2003 cleared the state's death row after a string of men who had sat there were found innocent.

The gravity of the issue played out Tuesday under the bright lights of the ornate Senate Chamber. Looking down from the spectator gallery was Gordon "Randy" Steidl, who spent 17 years in prison, including 12 on death row, after he was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 double-murder.

After the vote, Steidl said he felt senators knew "in their heart and soul" that Illinois should abolish the death penalty because the cost of making a mistake is "irreversible."

"We're all human, and we all make mistakes," Steidl said. "I think the Senate saw it, and I'm pretty sure that Gov. Quinn is aware of it."

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez argued against the measure at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting early Tuesday. Following the vote Alvarez said she was "extremely disappointed" and that the Senate made its decision "without a full, open and public debate."

Alvarez called the death penalty "a deterrent to violent crime in the most heinous of cases" that should be available, particularly "when we have witnessed outrageous crimes such as the senseless murder of five Chicago police officers this past year."

The Senate bill was championed by Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who pointed to Steidl and urged fellow lawmakers to seize the chance to "join the civilized world" and end the death penalty in Illinois.

Raoul noted that law enforcement had been certain that Jerry Hobbs and Kevin Fox were guilty of killing their own young daughters in high-profile crimes in the Chicago area. Both men were exonerated by DNA evidence.

"I cannot impose my values on you. You have to make your own reconciliation," Raoul said. "But I want you, as you push that button (to vote), to not be so removed from the medically trained man or woman who has to inject the serum in the person of a capital crime."

Patrick Smith, Jerry Hobbs' stepfather, said Tuesday that seeing what his stepson went through changed his position on the death penalty. "Being a lifelong resident of Texas, I'm wondering how many innocent ones we might have killed," Smith said.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 40 states, including Illinois, in 1972. Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, and is now among 35 states with the death penalty. New York, New Jersey and New Mexico have done away with the death penalty in the last three years.

The fate of 15 people now on death row in Illinois is uncertain. They would not be affected by the legislation now being considered by Quinn, according to the Department of Corrections. However, the moratorium on executing prisoners could remain in place.

The death penalty also remains a possibility in ongoing cases. On Tuesday, a jury was being chosen in the trial Laurence Lovejoy, who is accused of killing his 16-year-old stepdaughter in 2004.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and when attorneys notified DuPage County Judge Kathryn Creswell of the Senate vote, she directed jury selection to continue and said that the death penalty "is still the law of the land."

Andrea Lyon, a professor at DePaul University College of Law and director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, said she expected Quinn to sign the legislation as a cost-saving measure, if for no other reason.

She said Illinois spends about $100 million a year on death penalty cases, and that prosecutors seek it nearly 60 times for every one defendant who receives it.

Both sides of the debate were aired on the Senate floor Tuesday. Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, rejected suggestions by backers of the ban that it is tougher for killers to spend life in prison agonizing over their crimes.

"The Charles Mansons, the Ted Bundys, they are not going to sit in prison and repent," Holmes said. "They are sociopaths."

Sen. Kirk Dillard, R- Hinsdale, said the people of his district believe in executions for mass murderers and killers of police, prison guards and children.

"I think there's still a place for the death penalty for the worst of the worst of our society," Dillard said.

Dillard and Sen. Bill Haine, an Alton Democrat and former Madison County state's attorney, called for putting the question of whether to impose a ban before Illinois citizens.

But Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D- Olympia Fields, said lawmakers are elected to make the tough decisions. She said this nation's "system of justice is actually predicated upon the protection of the innocent, and executing one innocent person is too high a price to pay."

After Ryan put the moratorium in place, Illinois followed up with a number of steps to reform the death penalty process, including taping interrogations under a proposal forged by President Barack Obama when he was in the Illinois Senate.

Only days before he left office in January 2003, Ryan granted clemency to 164 death row inmates even though sources on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board said the panel recommended clemency for no more than 10.

Lawrence Marshall, a Stanford University law professor who co-founded Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, said the death penalty moratorium gave people time to judge the legal system without executions taking place.

"People begin to recognize one can have a very tough law enforcement system that doesn't involve execution," Marshall said.