By Alan Bean

Eight years ago, Illinois Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty when it was revealed that many “confessions” were coerced.  In Chicago, for instance, commander Jon Burge allegedly tortured one hundred eight men between 1973 and 1991.  Now, the Illinois legislature has voted to make Ryan’s moratorium permanent and hopes are high that current governor Pat Quinn will sign the legislation.

This Chicago Tribune editorial demonstrates that compassion for murderers has little to do with the demise of the death penalty in Illinois.  Few Americans want to be associated with rank injustice.  When the system is so broken that innocent men are certain to die, support for the ultimate punishment plummets. 

Two Friends of Justice board members attended an abolition conference in Chicago last week and came away with renewed confidence. 

It is unlikely that developments in Illinois will have much impact down here in capital punishment central, even after twenty innocent men have been exonerated in Dallas County alone.  May the day come when nobody in America will want to be associated with Lone Star State cruelty and caprice . . . including a majority of Texans. 

Editorial: Gov. Quinn should empty Death Row

If Gov. Quinn signs the bill that would abolish Illinois’ death penalty, what happens to the 15 men already on Death Row and perhaps others whose cases are working their way through the system?

Those cases wouldn’t be derailed by the new law, which would go into effect July 1, but Quinn would be wise to follow the lead of New Jersey’s governor when that state abolished the death penalty in 2007 — commute every existing death sentence to life in prison without parole.

One of the most damning criticisms of the death penalty is that it is arbitrary; some people are dispatched to Death Row and executed while others who commit similar crimes are not. That was a primary reason the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 overturned all death sentences and told states to revise their laws.

But the new laws proved to be no less capricious. The last man to be executed in Illinois was Andrew Kokoraleis in 1999, who participated with three other men in gruesome murders of women. But the alleged ringleader of that group was sentenced to 120 years.

If Quinn fails to act, Illinois could well embark on a new era of disparate justice. People who were sentenced before 2003 — when former Gov. George Ryan commuted all death sentences — or who committed their crimes after July 1 of this year would be immune from capital punishment, while those sentenced in between still could be executed if Quinn or some future governor allows the state’s current moratorium on executions to lapse.

That level of arbitrariness can’t be permitted in a civil society.

Let us be clear: We feel zero compassion for the 15 men now on Death Row. The record seems clear that they are guilty of unspeakable acts. Paul Runge, for example, raped, killed and set fire to a Chicago mother and her 10-year-old daughter. Dion Banks murdered a woman in front of her two young sons when she resisted a car-jacking.

But we don’t buy the argument from some death penalty supporters that the alternative of life in prison is a pleasant round of free prison meals and leisurely afternoons of TV.

Just ask now-exonerated Randy Steidl, who did 12 years on Death Row for a 1986 Downstate double murder he didn’t commit and then 5½ years of regular prison time until he was freed for good.

“Life without parole is very harsh,” says Steidl, who finally got out of prison in 2004. “You live in a four-foot by eight-foot cage with another person who might be a homicidal maniac or a mentally ill person.

“To try to live like that is a fate worse than death to me. . . . There were a few times that if they had rolled that gurney by my cell, I would have buckled myself onto it because after five minutes on that gurney, your problems are gone.”

Already, Illinois in recent years has freed 20 Death Row inmates whose convictions didn’t hold up upon close re-examination. Gov. Ryan, when he cleared 171 people from Death Row in 2003, said he did so because he couldn’t be certain that all of them were in fact guilty, given Illinois’ sorry record.

We don’t want to learn too late that one of the cases now working through the system or one of the men now on Death Row doesn’t belong there.

And ultimately, there is simply no place for the death penalty, for even the most heinous crimes, in a civilized society.

As Randy Steidl also said:

“Human beings should not be in the business of taking another person’s life.”