Today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, "Anti-death-penalty advocates gearing for new push in Illinois next week." It's written by Kevin McDermott.
An anti-death-penalty group says it will use the Illinois Legislature's lame-duck veto session next week to try and pass legislation officially abolishing the death penalty here, 10 years after the state unofficially stopped executing people.
The Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty will unveil its latest campaign on Tuesday, as lawmakers return to Springfield, the group said today.
Among the group's arguments in this budget-crunch era is that Illinois is still spending millions of dollars a year for the extra safeguards necessary in death-penalty trials, even though there are no actual executions on the horizon because of the state's on-going moratorium.
``It's like have a taxi in your garage with the meter running,'' said Jeremy Schroeder, the group's executive director.
State Sen. Bill Haine, D-Alton, a pro-death-penalty advocate who has led the effort to reform the system with eye toward resuming executions, said today he is willing to hear the group's arguments -- but not during the veto session, which is a brief meeting of a few days during November before the next full session starts in January.
And:
Illinois' death penalty moratorium was imposed in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan, in response to the revelation that 13 people had been wrongfully sent to the state's death row. The ``moratorium'' wasn't a change in the law, but simply meant that Ryan would longer sign off on executions.
The two governors since Ryan (Rod Blagojevich and Pat Quinn) have followed suit, leaving the moratorium in place and effectively halting all executions for a decade, pending reviews of the system.
Those reviews have been on-going for years, with no end-date in sight, giving the state's political leaders the best of both worlds: They can continue to take a law-and-order stance in favor of the death penalty in concept, while not actually presiding over any executions, with all their attendant controversy.
Daily Kos takes note of the Illinois action in the post, "Criminal InJustice Kos: Confessions, Innocence and Abolition."
The Illinois moratorium was enatced in 2000 and intended to extend until the llinois Commission on Capital Punishment’s reforms could be implemented. Now it is ten years later and the moratorium is still in place. For the last six years, a second commission has been looking at the progress of the reforms. Year after year they find that the majority have not been enacted at all.
Meanwhile the state continues to throw resources at a death penalty it can’t use – $100 million has been spent pursuing 16 death sentences since 2003. And the exonerations have kept coming. There were two just last year. With 20 men exonerated, Illinois has the second highest rate of wrongful death row convictions nationwide.
The Illinois legislature is meeting for a 6-day session, November 16-18 and November 29 – December 1. The short session will move at breakneck speed and there is a possibility that the legislature could take up repeal during that time. If they do, repeal could be right around the corner for Illinois.
Organizational partners Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) a national organization working to build a criminal justice system that is fair, effective, and humane, and the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (ICADP),) which is trying to end the death penalty in Illinois, will be on the ground in Springfield talking to legislators, mobilizing volunteers, and monitoring the media. A Repeal lobby day is currently scheduled for November 16 and another lobby day for people of faith will be held on the 29th. A series of other high profile events are also scheduled for this fall, as the momentum heats up for repeal. TAKE ACTION IN ILLINOIS!!!!!!!!!
Earlier coverage begins with the editorial linked in yesterday's "Opinion Roundup."
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