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Thread: Rodney Adkins - Illinois

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    Rodney Adkins - Illinois




    Facts of the Crime:

    Was sentenced to death for the brutal 2003 murder of Oak Park resident Catherine McAvinchey

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    IL Supreme Court upholds Oak Park killer's death sentence

    The Illinois Supreme court on Thursday affirmed the March 2007, murder conviction and subsequent death sentence of career burglar Rodney Adkins, who was convicted of the July 2003 burglary, home invasion and 1st -degree murder of Oak Park resident Catherine McAvinchey.

    The high court set March 15, 2011, as the date for Adkins' execution.

    Adkins, who had spent 20 of his 23 years as an adult in prison on burglary convictions prior to 2003, was sentenced to death by Judge Thomas Tucker on Aug. 5, 2007. He is currently on death row at the Pontiac Correctional Center.

    Lawyers for Adkins filed an appeal of his conviction. In asking for a new trial, they argued, among other things, that a potential juror who was dismissed for cause may have violated Adkins' right to an impartial jury, and that certain videotaped evidence should have been excluded. They also challenged Adkins' death sentence on several grounds.

    In its 53-page opinion, the high court unanimously affirmed the lower courts rejection of the new trial. The 6 justices involved in the decision also found that prosecutors had met all 3 of the standards for application of the death penalty. Citing Adkins long and extensive criminal history and the "brutal and vicious nature of the crime," they concluded death was "an appropriate penalty in this case."

    “He murdered an innocent woman who interrupted his crime, rather than flee and risk the possibility that she might be able to identify him,” the court noted.

    "That crime was the most brutal and heinous I have encountered in my 26-year law enforcement career," Oak Park Chief of Police Rick Tanksley said Thursday. He echoed the courts opinion of Adkins' choices, noting, "Adkins easily could have walked away, but chose instead to take the life of an innocent person for no reason. He could have just walked away."

    Tanksley said he hoped McAvinchey's family and friends could find some closure now.

    "I can't even imagine what it would be like to lose a loved one in such a way. This tragedy not only impacted the family and friends of Catherine, her murder was also felt by the larger Oak Park community and we shared in her family's loss."

    Tanksley defended the death penalty in this case, saying, "I do believe there are some crimes so terrible that perhaps a life for a life is the only response society can give."

    (Source: The Pioneer Press)

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Repeal would spare 'truly evil man' convicted of 2003 Oak Park murder

    The Illinois Legislature on Tuesday gave Rodney Adkins what the Illinois Supreme Court would not -- a reprieve from certain death.

    In October, the Illinois Supreme Court rejected convicted murder Rodney Adkins' appeal seeking to have his death penalty overturned and be given a new trial. Adkins is scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 15. However, the state legislature's move to repeal the death penalty may halt Adkins' execution.

    A career burglar and drug addict who had spent 22 of his 26 adult years behind bars, Adkins was on parole from convictions for burglary and arson committed in Oak Park in 2003. On July 31, he broke into Catherine McAvinchey's Washington Boulevard apartment, intent on robbing her.

    But McAvinchey, who had taken the day off, had returned home from exercising and found Adkins in her apartment. Fearful she would identify him, Adkins broke her back and slashed her throat with a bread knife.

    In March 2007, after a three-day trial and less than an hour of deliberation, a jury convicted Adkins of McAvinchey's murder, as well as home invasion and burglary.

    On April 12, 2007, Cook County Judge Thomas Tucker took less than a minute to pass sentence on Adkins. The sentence followed six hours of testimony from of both the Adkins and McAvinchey families, as well as at times emotional arguments from both the prosecution and defense.

    Tucker told Adkins he'd considered all the evidence, read the pre-sentencing report, and heard the arguments for both aggravation and mitigation.

    “There is not sufficient evidence of mitigation," he concluded, and sentenced Adkins to death.

    On Oct. 21, 2010, the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed both Adkins' convictions and death sentence and set a March 15 date for his execution.

    The Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty noted that Adkins was the only Cook County defendant singled out for a death sentence in 2007. The coalition's report noted that Adkins “was a longtime drug addict, he had served time for several previous burglaries, but had no history of violence and had apparently been a model prisoner.”

    "The murder, while awful, was not premeditated in any real sense, and many trials involving multiple victims or very brutal murders had not resulted in death sentences. To many observers, it confirmed the arbitrary nature of capital punishment in Illinois.”

    Defense attorney Preston Jones, who himself called Adkins “a pathetic crack head,” argued at the sentencing that Adkins was not among “the worst of the worst,” and should be sentenced to life without parole.

    But co-prosecutor Maureen O'Brien scoffed at the idea that only the worst killers are eligible for the death penalty. She painted a picture of a cold, remorseless and calculating career criminal who could have let McAvinchey live, but chose to kill her.

    "I knew she wasn't dead at that point," Adkins tells police on his recorded confession. "I went to the kitchen and grabbed a knife off the kitchen counter." He then used the knife to saw into her throat, slowly severing her trachea and cutting the artery.

    The jury agreed. Foreman Dominic Belmonte said after the trial that while jurors were prepared to convict Adkins on the physical evidence alone, Adkins' own words on his audio-taped confession showed him to be a “truly evil man.”

    "There's a special place for Rodney Adkins," co-prosecutor Alan Lynn concluded at Adkins' sentencing hearing. "It's called death row."

    Adkins and many others now must wait to find out whether such a place will continue to exist in Illinois. The death penalty's repeal goes to the governor's desk for signing.

    http://www.pioneerlocal.com/oakpark/...111-s1.article

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Sentence commuted by Governor Quinn on March 9, 2011.

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    I cannot find any inmate by the name of Rodney Adkins in the Illinois database, nor by his inmate number. He's either been released or he's deceased.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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