Continued Illinois Coverage

Today's Rockford Register Star carries the editorial, "Our View: Moral, practical reasons to end death penalty in Illinois."

Gov. Pat Quinn says he would like to hear from the people of Illinois before he decides whether to sign a law ending the death penalty in this state.

He can listen all he wants, but all the evidence he needs is already before him. Capital punishment in Illinois must end.

Execution cannot be reversed if a mistake is made — and, in that way, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It is also punishment carried out in a breathtakingly reckless manner in this state.

The measure that Quinn is considering signing was passed before the Legislature adjourned two weeks ago. During the fall campaign for governor, Quinn said he supported the 10-year moratorium on executions in Illinois but supported capital punishment “when applied carefully and fairly.”

Carefully and fairly? Illinois knows no such things.

And:

We know some victims’ families feel their losses need to be avenged (although not all families feel that way — some families feel that another death just compounds the illogic and the barbarism).

Quinn has heard all he needs to hear. He needs to sign the bill outlawing the death penalty in Illinois and get on with a fairer, more civil, more humane way of justice in this state.

In today's New York Times, James Warren writes, "The Governor Wrings His Hands on the Death Penalty."  Warren's article is also available at the Chicago News Cooperative.  Like the Texas Tribune, the Coop is a partner with the Times to provide enhanced local news coverage.

The governor supported the death penalty during his campaign last year when few imagined the legislature would get to abolition, and in a lame-duck session no less. Fellow Democrats not only backed it but risked voter retribution after carrying the burden for a Quinn tax increase far stiffer than anything he had broached as a candidate.

Saying he must deal with his conscience, Mr. Quinn and aides are asking various individuals for their take on the bill and abolition. He has 60 days, or until March 18, to keep us in suspense.

And, remember, this is after years of news media revelations, studies and a moratorium on executions that have proved that the system is kaput and should be, as Michael Keaton put it in the film “Beetlejuice,” “dead, dead, deadski.”

“Is this theater?” said Jeremy Schroeder, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, when I asked about Mr. Quinn’s supposedly probing the innermost recesses of his soul.

“For goodness gracious, he claimed he was a reformer!” declared State Senator Dan Duffy of Lake Barrington, a Roman Catholic South Sider and die-hard Republican conservative who voted for abolition. “Quinn’s always trying to make everybody happy.”

The notion that there’s a bit of a sham under way has crossed minds. Might the governor’s helter-skelter ways include a search for cover before he disappoints death penalty supporters?

“You’d think it would be something he would have signed immediately,” said Senate President John J. Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat. “It would be dumb politically and dumb morally if he didn’t.”

And:

“I don’t begrudge anybody for taking their time to think the issue through,” said Senator Jeffrey M. Schoenberg, Democrat of Evanston, one of the few people I contacted who was not critical.

Mr. Schoenberg grappled with the issue for 17 years after a shocking brush with a 1993 murder. A neo-Nazi killed a Wilmette plastic surgeon not long after showing up at Mr. Schoenberg’s office asking to see the luckily absent politician.

Mr. Schoenberg said “the scales tilted” in his position on the death penalty only recently after he read a law review article by Leigh B. Beinen, a senior lecturer at Northwestern University Law School, who underscored the financial wastefulness of the current system.

“If Quinn reads Professor Beinen’s analysis, he can’t come to any other conclusion,” said Mr. Schoenberg, who voted for abolition.

And how might Mr. Quinn’s Catholicism play into this? “I associate ‘conscience’ with Catholic moral teaching, and Catholic moral teaching finds the death penalty abhorrent,” said Richard Rosengarten, a University of Chicago divinity professor. “The governor’s got his terms and traditions at sixes and sevens.”

Earlier coverage from Illinois begins with the post, "An Illinois Sidebar."