Death-penalty opponents are racing the clock to pass legislation abolishing capital punishment in Illinois before the middle of next week, when the seating of a new Legislature will make the move more difficult. Death-penalty supporters are poised to fight them on it.
About 30 proponents of abolishing the death penalty gathered at the state Capitol Tuesday, lobbying lawmakers to complete work on a bill that stalled last month as it awaited a House floor vote. They argue the state's death-penalty system is irreparably flawed, and creates a fiscal cost that the deficit-ridden state can't afford.
"It's time," said state Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, sponsor of the abolition measure in the Senate. He and other supporters believe they have enough support to get the bill passed this week.
Death-penalty supporters, including prosecutors and murder victims' relatives, are decrying what they say is a rush to judgment on the issue.
It "cheapens the value of life" for victims to make fiscal arguments for abolishing the death penalty, said Sheldon Sobol, president of the Illinois State's Attorneys Association. He and others urged further review of the system before removing the death penalty from the books.
The showdown comes more than 10 years after then-Gov. George Ryan suspended all executions, in 2000, because of the discovery that 13 men on the state's death row had been wrongly convicted. Ryan later commuted the death sentences of all 167 condemned Illinois inmates, effectively emptying the state's death row.
The ban on executions remains in place today, though defendants are still being tried and sentenced to death. With the slow pace of capital cases in the system, just 15 men are awaiting execution in Illinois today, with no certainty about when or whether those sentences will be carried out.
Death-penalty proponents maintain that it's unclear whether the death penalty creates a financial drain on the state because of the extra time and legal costs involved, as anti-death-penalty activists claim, and that some studies suggest it does in fact deter crime.
The fight could come down to a question of timing. The abolition bill has already gone through the committee process in the House and is awaiting a floor vote, and the whole process would have to start over again if it isn't done before the seating of the new General Assembly on Jan. 12. Also, the makeup of the Legislature will be more conservative than it is now, with Democrats still controlling both chambers but by smaller margins.
"We've got to get it done this week," said Ryan Keith, a lobbyist for the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
The bill is SB3539.
Source: STLToday.com, January 5, 2011
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