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Thread: Illinois Capital Punishment News

  1. #11
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    Death penalty supporters ask lawmakers to think of victims’ families

    With a vote over the death penalty in Illinois possibly looming in the coming days, supporters of capital punishment Tuesday sought to bring victims’ families to the forefront of the debate.

    “It’s they who have born the brunt of these crimes,” said Alex McGimpsey of the DuPage County State’s Attorney Office.
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    Among them is Roger Schnorr, whose sister Donna was a 27-year-old nurse from Geneva when she was killed by Brian Dugan in 1984. Dugan was already serving time in prison for that crime when he was sentenced to death for the 1983 DuPage County murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico.

    “He took their lives from them, and he still lives,” Schnorr said at a Springfield news conference.

    “Death is the right sentence for this killer,” Schnorr said.

    Lawmakers could consider abolishing the death penalty as early as this week. The term of the General Assembly ends next week, and lawmakers could consider lots of controversial legislation in its final days.

    Critics of the push to abolish the death penalty argue the effort is being rushed.

    But Sen. Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat, said supporters of ending the death penalty have to act when they have the support.

    “I think when you have momentum, you need to seize that momentum,” Raoul said.

    And, Raoul said, many murder victims’ families support ending the death penalty in an effort to eliminate mistakes.

    No one has been executed in Illinois since former Gov. George Ryan cleared death row last decade at least in part because of a wrongful prosecution in Nicarico’s death.

    Since then, the debate over the death penalty has raged on. Supporters say the ultimate punishment can be a deterrent to murder and is appropriate for the most heinous crimes. And opponents point to mistakes made in the justice system that have led to innocent people being sentenced to death.

    If the death penalty is abolished in Illinois, everyone who has been sentenced to death since Ryan cleared death row would get life in prison without parole instead.

    A first vote likely come in the Illinois House. And it’s unclear what Gov. Pat Quinn would do if legislation to abolish the death penalty reached his desk.


    Read more: http://www.dailyherald.com/article/2...#ixzz1A6dZNuS6

  2. #12
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    Death penalty ban fails by one vote in Illinois House

    A move to abolish the death penalty in Illinois failed by a single vote in the House today.

    The vote came 10 years after then-Gov. George Ryan first placed a moratorium on the death penalty following revelations that several people sent to Death Row were later exonerated.
    “We know today that this system is broken beyond repair. We must end it now,” said sponsoring Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood. “We know to that this system is broken beyond repair. We must end it now.”

    Opponents argued Chicago police officers are being targeted and killed by thugs, saying this is not the right time to eliminate capital punishment.

    Republican Rep. Jim Sacia, a former FBI agent from Pecatonica, said threatening defendants with the death penalty often can make them talk to authorities to help solve crimes.

    “Don’t take that tool from law enforcement,” Sacia said.

    In the end, 59 House members voted for the ban and 58 opposed. The bill needed 60 votes to advance to the Senate.

    Fifteen people currently are on Death Row in Illinois.

    Thirty-five states now have the death penalty, and Illinois would become the 16th state to not have the death penalty if Illinois approved abolishing it. Three other states --- New York, New Jersey and New Mexico --- have eliminated the death penalty in recent years, said Ryan Keith, a spokesman for the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

    No abolition legislation has passed either house in Illinois since executions were reinstated in 1977. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty guidelines in 40 states, including Illinois, in 1972.

    http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...ois-house.html

  3. #13
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    Illinois House Passes Bill To Repeal Death Penalty

    The Illinois House voted narrowly to abolish the death penalty Thursday, marking the first time either legislative chamber has moved to end executions since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. The measure passed 60-54 and now moves to Senate.

    http://www.suntimes.com/3194037-417/...4-abolish.html

  4. #14
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    Area prosecutors want death penalty to stay

    Central Illinois prosecutors criticized a vote by the Illinois House to abolish the death penalty, a decision that one prosecutor said could bankrupt his county.

    If the cost of providing a defense for two brothers accused of killing a Beason family is shifted to Logan County taxpayers, the county could face more legal bills than it can handle, said Logan County State’s Attorney Michael McIntosh. Christopher Harris and Jason Harris each face more than 50 counts of murder in the 2009 deaths of Ruth and Rick Gee and three of their children.

    The county still is researching the impact of the legislation that would end the death penalty in Illinois — and a fund that pays for legal costs in cases in which capital punishment may be an option, said McIntosh.

    McIntosh was among the legal experts commenting Friday on the House’s 60-54 vote on Thursday to end capital punishment. The bill now moves to the state Senate.

    While death penalty foes hailed the effort to end a “barbaric practice,” proponents claimed a ban would deprive the courts of an appropriate response to particularly heinous crimes. Critics also argued moving the ban through the General Assembly’s lame duck session was not appropriate.

    McIntosh is worried about a provision in the bill that calls for spending money left in the Capital Litigation Trust Fund on law enforcement training and services for murder victims’ families. Without money from the fund to help pay legal bills in death-penalty-eligible cases, Logan County taxpayers could be left responsible for paying four private defense lawyers in the Harris case.

    “I don’t see how we could afford to pay for the defense attorneys they have. This could bankrupt the county,” said McIntosh.

    The state is scheduled to announce Feb. 4 whether it will to seek the death penalty in the Beason case.

    McLean County State’s Attorney Bill Yoder said ending the death penalty would take away an appropriate option for the state in heinous cases. Yoder also objected to the matter being handled in a lame duck legislative session.

    “People are tired of the backdoor, smoke-and-mirrors style of doing things in Springfield,” said Yoder.

    He added that the public and crime victims should have been afforded a chance to be heard on the issue.

    Tazewell County State’s Attorney Stewart Umholtz also criticized lawmakers for doing nothing to fix the problems cited in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan when he issued a moratorium on executions that remains in force.

    “These same legislative leaders … sat on their hands for an entire decade while three governors decided that Illinois would not enforce the death penalty,” said Umholtz.

    Advocates who supported the moratorium applauded the abolition.

    “This is an historic achievement that was long overdue,” said Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern School of Law. The Chicago-based center has worked to exonerate 23 innocent men and women over the past 12 years.

    “Illinois abolition undoubtedly will be the catalyst for other state legislatures to follow suit,” Warden said. “Ending the death penalty will save Illinois taxpayers at least $10 million a year, at a time when teachers are being laid off and social services are being curtailed.

    “To the legislators who voted against abolition, I can only say that posterity will be as ashamed of you for condoning this barbaric practice as we are of our ancestors who condoned slavery,” Warden said.

    http://www.pantagraph.com/news/state...cc4c03286.html

  5. #15
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    Death Penalty Expected to Pass Senate

    SPRINGFIELD (WIFR) -- There's a strong likelihood criminals could no longer be eligible for the death penalty in Illinois.

    The Illinois House approved to abolish the death penalty last week and now the State Senate is expected to take up the issue tomorrow.

    Lawmakers like State Representative Chuck Jefferson voted yes due to fears of putting someone who's innocent on death row. But those in law enforcement say the death penalty is an excellent aid in getting confessions and also a deterrent in heinous crimes.

    While he doesn't support the measure, State Senator Dave Syverson expects it to be approved.

    http://www.wifr.com/news/headlines/D...4.html?ref=564

  6. #16
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    Illinois death penalty ban a step closer to governor's desk

    SPRINGFIELD --- A measure to abolish the death penalty in Illinois is a step closer to Gov. Pat Quinn's desk as supporters push to pass the measure in the waning hours of the General Assembly’s lame-duck session.

    The ban on executions won approval today in the Senate Judiciary Committee 7-4, clearing the path for a vote by the full Senate. The measure passed the House last week.

    The action comes 10 years after then-Gov. George Ryan placed a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois following revelations that several people sent to Death Row were later exonerated.

    Quinn has not said whether he would sign the ban, but during last year's campaign said the moratorium should stay in place to see whether reforms have worked.
    Gordon “Randy” Steidl, who spent 17 years in prison, including 12 on Death Row, after he was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 double-murder, pleaded with the committee to end a death penalty system in Illinois that could have had him executed.

    "How can you possibly give the power of life and death to a prosecutor, who even if he does everything correctly, there's still that possibility that you’re going to strap an innocent person to a gurney?” Steidl said. “And we know we have in this country, we know we have executed innocent people in the past. The problem is, after they’re executed, the state no longer cares. The evidence is there, we have an alternative, and that's life without parole and we do not risk the possiibility of executing an innocent person. Because you know sooner or later if we have this system we will."

    The panel voted in favor of the proposal despite concerns raised by opponents who cited the need for the death penalty to be in place. They pointed to the shooting of a congresswoman in Arizona over the weekend and murder of six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl. The vote in Springfield also comes against the backdrop of six Chicago policemen killed over the last year.

    Sen. William Haine, a former Madison County state’s attorney, argued fervently to keep the death penalty in place.

    "To call for perfection necessarily involves speculation about a future faulty case.” Haine argued. “We have in our hands 15 cases of the worst on Death Row now. … Fifteen muderers, that's not speculation. The people of Illinois should be a part of this and we should not be removing what they believe is justice."

    Sponsoring Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, said he has confidence that Quinn will come around and sign the bill once he hears from Steidl and other wrongfully convicted former Death Row inmates.

    Outside of the hearing room, Raoul choked up and his eyes welled up as he talked about the historic breadth of the legislation, particularly in a state where unethical means have been used to squeeze defendants into false confessions.

    “It’s an emotional debate,” Raoul said, his voice breaking as he took several seconds to gather himself. “I talk to my kids and their friends in their school about this. My kids attend Catholic school, and they get their values-based education, and they understand it better than some adults do.”

    Thirty-five states now have the death penalty, and Illinois would become the 16th state to not have the death penalty if Illinois approved abolishing it. Three other states — New York, New Jersey and New Mexico — have eliminated the death penalty in recent years, according to the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

    Before last week, no abolition legislation had passed either house in Illinois since executions were reinstated in 1977. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty guidelines in 40 states, including Illinois, in 1972.

    Support for abolishing executions in Illinois has grown since Ryan declared the moratorium. His action followed a Tribune series that pointed out flaws and inequities in the prosecution and defense of Illinoisans facing a death sentence and the exoneration of several people placed on Death Row.

    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 served in the Illinois Senate. More money was made available to help provide resources to beef up the defense of alleged offenders in death penalty cases, but the millions of dollars being spent raised additional questions.

    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.

    http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/...nors-desk.html

  7. #17
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    Bill to abolish Ill. death penalty heading to gov.

    SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The Illinois Senate voted Tuesday to abolish capital punishment, sending the historic issue to Gov. Pat Quinn and putting the state back at the center of an ongoing national debate.

    Quinn wouldn't say whether he would sign the legislation.

    In a state that has removed 20 wrongly condemned people from death row since 1987, the Senate voted 32-25 to end execution more than a decade after a former governor halted the punishment he called "haunted by the demon of error."

    "We have a historic opportunity today, an opportunity to part company with countries that are the worst civil rights violators and join the civilized world by ending this practice of putting to death innocent people," said Sen. Kwame Raoul, the Chicago Democrat who sponsored the measure.

    Illinois would be the fourth state since 2007 to rid its books of capital punishment.

    But Democrat Quinn, already wrapped up in a debate over a massive tax increase that could sully his political future, won't say what he will do with an issue historically so explosive it can end careers. He supports the death penalty but said he would not lift the moratorium on executions imposed in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan until he was sure the system worked.

    National experts and advocates said repeal in Illinois — which has executed a dozen people in the last three decades and at one time had 170 condemned inmates — puts weight behind the national discussion.

    "This is a state in which this was used and then stopped, it was debated for years, fixed — or reformed — and finally there was a resolution by just getting rid of it, so that's about as thorough a process as any state could do," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. "That's significant."

    Former law enforcement officials in the Senate had argued prosecutors need the threat of death to get guilty pleas from suspects who opt for life in prison. They said allowing police and state's attorneys to continue seeking capital punishment will make them more willing to accept reforms in the ways crimes are investigated and prosecuted.

    Others argued citizens still want the death penalty option for the worst of crimes.

    "It's not a question of vengeance," said Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton. "It's a question of the people being outraged at such terrible crimes, such bloodletting."

    Illinois would join 15 states and the District of Columbia in ridding its books of capital punishment, including three — New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York — since 2007. A New York court declared the state's law unconstitutional in 2004 but decreed three years later it applied to the last inmate on death row.

    "It's a clear trend," said Debra Erenberg, Midwest regional director for Amnesty International USA. Illinois' problems have "been a very clear exhibit of the flaws in the death penalty and the way it's been implemented across the country."

    Colorado, Connecticut, Kansas, Maryland and Montana are among other states that have considered repeal in the past year or still are pursuing it, experts said.

    There's no proof Illinois ever executed an innocent person. But one man was hours from death before he was exonerated and 12 others had been removed from death row when Ryan put a moratorium on death and created a commission to study its problems. Just before leaving office in 2003, he cleared death row by commuting the death sentences of 167 people and exonerated four more.

    Lawmakers, who already had created a state fund to pay for competent capital defenses, implemented further reforms that year, including training for defense lawyers, more thorough investigative practices such as videotaping confessions, and easier access to DNA testing.

    Those reforms are working, opponents argued.

    "This is a tool to save additional lives," said Sen. Dave Syverson, R-Rockford. "Use it sparingly, yes, but to take it away will cost us additional lives."

    Sen. Don Harmon, an Oak Park Democrat, took issue with several characterizations of a potential death penalty as a prosecutor's "tool." He said a prosecutor's promise not to seek death in exchange for a guilty plea holds the potential for as much mischief as confessions manufactured by police tortures in the 1980s that led to videotaping suspect interviews.

    "This is not a tool. This is an awesome power," Harmon said. "Can you imagine if you had the power to say, 'You should do what I'm telling you to do, or I will use the full force of the law and the power of the state of Illinois to try to kill you?'"

    Several senators, including those who revealed personal encounters with violent crime, explained their evolving positions on the issue, revealing its emotional potency.

    Sen. Toi Hutchison, D-Chicago Heights, said she would likely want to see death for anyone who hurt her children, but the state should find life in prison sufficient for evil in this world.

    "You deal" with prison, she said, "and then burn in hell for what you did."

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...39eec4fe6780cc

  8. #18
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    Quinn won't say if he will sign death penalty ban

    Gov. Pat Quinn declined to say today whether he will sign a bill abolishing the death penalty, saying only he would reflect and "follow my conscience."

    Quinn's comment came as he prepared to hold his first news conference since the momentous votes Tuesday in the General Assembly that sent him a death penalty ban and then, in the wee hours of this morning, a major income tax increase.
    The Democratic-led Senate approved the legislation Tuesday by a vote of 35-22, with two senators voting present. The House approved the measure a week earlier.

    The death penalty ban, which would make Illinois the 16th state to bar executions, comes after years of controversy over the state's history of uneven and repeatedly flawed prosecution of capital cases.

    During the fall campaign, Quinn said he supported "capital punishment when applied carefully and fairly."

    But he 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 inmates were found innocent.

    Mayor Richard Daley, a former Cook County prosecutor, said today lawmakers should not have abolished the death penalty but should instead have worked to end the "imperfections" in the law by increasing the use of DNA testing to make certain the correct people get arrested for murders.

    "Maybe some people disagree with me, but in certain situations it should be handled (by implementing the death penalty)," said Daley, who was surrounded by people who have lost loved ones to violence for an announcement that downtown buildings will be lit up with blue lights in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.

    "I have met parents, that their child has died, and this person has been out of prison. I mean, how do they live with that?" Daley said.

    Daley said he was not discouraging the governor from signing the law abolishing the death penalty. "It's up to him," the mayor said.

    http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2...h-penalty.html

  9. #19
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    * A little known fact…

    Even if Gov. Pat Quinn signs legislation that would repeal the death penalty, it would have no bearing on 15 inmates on death row.

    “It will only affect future sentencing,” said Sharyn Elman, a Corrections spokeswoman, said Wednesday of the proposed ban.

    With the 15 men on death row, Quinn has three options: leave the moratorium in place and the inmates on death row; lift the moratorium and “the inmates could eventually be put to death;” or commute their sentences to life or something other length, Elman said.

    http://capitolfax.com/2011/01/13/abo...ear-death-row/

  10. #20
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    Lt. Gov. urges Gov. Quinn to end death penalty


    Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon has added her voice to the chorus of political leaders who are urging Gov. Pat Quinn to sign legislation ending the death penalty in Illinois.

    In a letter she sent to Quinn on Monday, Simon points out that she spent four years as an assistant state's attorney in southern Illinois' Jackson County, and feels that she did a good job in that post. But she also says that our criminal justice system, even when operating at its best, is still imperfect.

    In urging Quinn to sign the death penalty ban recently passed by the Illinois General Assembly, Simon also noted that since 1977, 20 people sentenced to death in Illinois have been freed because they were later found innocent or because the cases against them collapsed.

    http://www.wlsam.com/Article.asp?id=2091236&spid=

    ::SIGH::

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