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Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 10:52 pm    Post subject: Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty Reply with quote

Article here.

Quote:
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty Wednesday, more than a decade after the state imposed a moratorium on executions out of concern that innocent people could be put to death by a justice system that had wrongly condemned 13 men.

Quinn also commuted the sentences of all 15 inmates remaining on Illinois' death row. They will now serve life in prison.

As he signed the bill, Quinn called it the "most difficult decision" he has made as governor. But he said the best step forward for Illinois was to be done with the death penalty altogether.

"We all know that our state has had serious problems with respect to the system of the death penalty for many years," he said.

State lawmakers voted in January to abandon capital punishment, and Quinn spent two months reflecting on the issue, speaking with prosecutors, victims' families, death penalty opponents and religious leaders.

Quinn said he studied every aspect of Illinois' death penalty and concluded that it was impossible to create a perfect system, "one that is free of all mistakes, free of all discrimination with respect to race or economic circumstance or geography."

Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said no state has studied the death penalty more than Illinois.

"For a Midwest state that actually had one of the larger death rows in the country to come to this point, I think, is even more significant than some of the earlier states which hardly used the death penalty," he said.

Illinois' moratorium goes back to 2000, when then-Republican Gov. George Ryan made international headlines by suspending executions. He acted after years of growing doubts about the justices system and after courts threw out the death sentences of 13 condemned men.

Shortly before leaving office in 2003, Ryan also cleared death row, commuting the sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison. Illinois' last execution was in 1999.

When the new law takes effect on July 1, Illinois will join 15 other states that have done away with the executions. Quinn said he hoped other states would follow.

"I think if you abolish the death penalty in Illinois, we should abolish it for everyone," he said.

New Mexico had been the most recent state to repeal the death penalty, doing so in 2009, although new Republican Gov. Susana Martinez wants to reinstate it.

Quinn consulted with retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and met with Sister Helen Prejean, the inspiration for the movie Dead Man Walking.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan appealed directly to Quinn to veto the bill, as did several county prosecutors and victims' families. They said safeguards, including videotaped interrogations and easier access to DNA evidence, were in place to prevent innocent people from being wrongly executed.

Pam Bosley, who helped organize a group for families of children killed by gun violence, tried to talk Quinn out of signing the bill. Her 18-year-old son, Terrell, was shot to death in 2006 as he was coming out of church.

"I can't see my son at all no more. I can't see him grow old," she said. "They took all that from me, so I feel that their life needs to be ended."

But death penalty opponents argued that there was still no guarantee that an innocent person couldn't be put to death. Quinn's own lieutenant governor, Sheila Simon, a former southern Illinois prosecutor, asked him to abolish capital punishment.

Quinn offered words of consolation to those who had lost loved ones and announced that there would be a death penalty abolition trust fund to provide resources to relatives of victims.

"You are not alone in your grief," he said. "I think it's important that all of us reach out through this trust fund in helping family members recover."

Twelve men have been executed in Illinois since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated. The last was Andrew Kokoraleis on March 17, 1999. At the time, the average length of stay on death row for the dozen men was 13 years.

Kokoraleis, convicted of mutilating and murdering a 21-year-old woman, was put to death by lethal injection.


Capital punishment is bad policy. This is a good thing. Putting aside the ethical question of whether it's acceptable to needlessly terminate the life of the guilty, Quinn is right that it's impossible to design a system that with 100% accuracy avoids executing innocents, and even one innocent being executed is one too many. No idea why he called it "the most difficult decision" he has made as governor, though. Abolishing the death penalty makes sense from both an economic and an ethical standpoint. It should have been the easiest decision he's ever had to make.
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Space Bar



Joined: 20 Oct 2010

PostPosted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:14 pm    Post subject: Re: Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
No idea why he called it "the most difficult decision" he has made as governor, though. Abolishing the death penalty makes sense from both an economic and an ethical standpoint. It should have been the easiest decision he's ever had to make.

He has a lot of blood lust to appease so was probably just being politic about it. As you know, there are some very ardent supporters of capital punishment, some on this very board, who absolutely gloat over the prospect of an execution. They apparently cannot accept the idea that people can change nor that these are subjects lost to study forever, sabotaging any attempts to identify and prevent future murderers before the fact.
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geldedgoat



Joined: 05 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:15 pm    Post subject: Re: Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
Abolishing the death penalty makes sense from both an economic and an ethical standpoint. It should have been the easiest decision he's ever had to make.


Agreed. It's embarrassing that a majority of the states still have it on the books.
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Madigan



Joined: 15 Oct 2010

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 6:07 am    Post subject: Re: Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty Reply with quote

geldedgoat wrote:
Fox wrote:
Abolishing the death penalty makes sense from both an economic and an ethical standpoint. It should have been the easiest decision he's ever had to make.


Agreed. It's embarrassing that a majority of the states still have it on the books.


The State of Illinois has had an effective moratorium of the pain of death since 1999. Still, I agree that it is a positive development. Indiana now remains the only Great Lake State/Upper Mid-West state with capital punishment on their books.
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ontheway



Joined: 24 Aug 2005
Location: Somewhere under the rainbow...

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 7:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The death penalty should be abolished everywhere.

Good for Illinois.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Awesome. Illinois is no longer in the same ballpark as China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.
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caniff



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I do not support the death penalty (never did), but I am fully in support of convict work gangs filling in the massive number of pot-holes in the roads around here (most cities and townships lack the funds).
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

caniff wrote:
I do not support the death penalty (never did), but I am fully in support of convict work gangs filling in the massive number of pot-holes in the roads around here (most cities and townships lack the funds).


While I acknowledge the emotional gratification of chain gangs, I doubt unemployed construction workers would be very happy about it. I'm also skeptical of the judiciary. Too many of them might be tempted to incarcerate people to fill up the work gangs, in the same fashion those Pennsylvania (or was it New York?) judges who filled the youth-detention-centers- for-profit in return for a kick back.

As for the massive number of potholes around there, there's a simple solution: cut some rich peoples' taxes.
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caniff



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 1:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Okay, how about volunteer-comprised convict work gangs? (I don't know whether they should be actually chained together or if a less burdensome form of public protection is sufficient). I would think that some (many?) convicts would volunteer just to get outside for a while.

I've never been a convict, but I know sitting around doing nothing doesn't work well for me. I suspect I'm not alone in that.
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Ya-ta Boy



Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 4:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

caniff wrote:
Okay, how about volunteer-comprised convict work gangs? (I don't know whether they should be actually chained together or if a less burdensome form of public protection is sufficient). I would think that some (many?) convicts would volunteer just to get outside for a while.

I've never been a convict, but I know sitting around doing nothing doesn't work well for me. I suspect I'm not alone in that.


If we can't have chains, I don't want them at all (purist that I am). Wink

I could be persuaded to assign each convict a garden plot and allow them to eat only the veggies they can grow. There is just something about work gangs slaving away on public projects that rubs me the wrong way.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 4:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In a society where we expect our citizens to provide for themselves, forcing them to compete with prison labor isn't reasonable. No one should profit off of prisons in any fashion; they should be a pure drain on society in order to minimize incentive to lock people up. Prison privatization and prison labor are both madness.

On the other hand, prisoners gardening to raise vegetables for purely internal use (as opposed to market distribution) sounds great (not so much the "you can only eat what you grow" part though).
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geldedgoat



Joined: 05 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 11:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
In a society where we expect our citizens to provide for themselves, forcing them to compete with prison labor isn't reasonable. No one should profit off of prisons in any fashion; they should be a pure drain on society in order to minimize incentive to lock people up.


I agree... mostly. I see no problem in having a prison maintained through the use of prison labor to minimize that drain on society. Everything outside of the property, though, should definitely remain off-limits.
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ED209



Joined: 17 Oct 2006

PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Don't want them stealing jobs from Mexicans
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caniff



Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map

PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 3:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ED209 wrote:
Don't want them stealing jobs from Mexicans


In this area it'd more likely be Puerto Ricans and the poor whites shipped in from the hilltowns competing for the lucrative pothole-filling contracts.
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Madigan



Joined: 15 Oct 2010

PostPosted: Fri Mar 11, 2011 5:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

caniff wrote:
ED209 wrote:
Don't want them stealing jobs from Mexicans


In this area it'd more likely be Puerto Ricans and the poor whites shipped in from the hilltowns competing for the lucrative pothole-filling contracts.


Really? Where I am, the Peurto Ricans have many of the white collar jobs in places like law, finance and government. Besides, it really isn't so much the Mexicans that would be disappointed as it would be the unions. The unions control everything here and I doubt they would really want to be subjected to competition from the prisons.
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