[Peace-discuss] NYT: Illinois and Capital Punishment

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/opinion/14fri2.html

January 13, 2011
Illinois and Capital Punishment
Eleven years after gross injustice compelled a moratorium on capital
punishment in Illinois, the State Legislature has concluded that the
only way to guard against execution of the innocent is to outlaw the
death penalty. Gov. Pat Quinn, who has sent mixed signals in the past,
should quickly sign the legislation into law.

Former Gov. George Ryan declared the moratorium in 2000 in the face of
a running scandal of faulty trials that cost innocent inmates their
lives. Three years later, Mr. Ryan stunned the nation by commuting 167
death row felons to life terms and calling for a hard look at the
business of state-sanctioned death. (Mr. Ryan subsequently went to
prison for statehouse corruption, but the flaws of capital punishment
remained clear, as dramatically confirmed now by the Legislature.)

Under prodding from outside investigators, the state has had to free
20 inmates from death row since 1987. It has also enacted some
commendable reforms. These included mandatory taping of interviews
with homicide suspects — a measure that followed tales of torture in
notorious Chicago precinct houses.

But other vital reforms to clean up forensic lab abuses and
stage-managed witness identifications were rejected. And for all the
official study, caution and reforms of the past decade, the
Legislature found the system still riddled with risk and doubt.

Fifteen inmates are now on death row under the open-ended moratorium
as prosecutors continue to pursue capital punishment. Most recently,
two condemned men convicted on the basis of confessions were
exonerated by DNA evidence.

Governor Quinn said last fall that he supported the moratorium as well
as capital punishment “applied carefully and fairly.” Illinois’s own
experience has shown why that is not possible. Most modern nations,
and 15 states in this country, have rightly abandoned the barbarism of
state executions. The sanctity of human life and the honor of the
state require Governor Quinn to lead Illinois beyond its wrenching
history of wrongful death-row convictions.

-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org