"Yes, listen and reflect …," is the title of the Tribune editorial today.
Gov. Pat Quinn has until March 18 to act on one of the most important bills that will ever land in his "in" box: a measure that would end the death penalty in Illinois.
He hasn't said he'll sign it. He hasn't said he won't.
"I'm happy to listen and reflect, and I'll follow my conscience," he said.
And:
Quinn is being asked to make a fundamental change. He has been a proponent of capital punishment in the most heinous cases. He has also expressed deep reservations about Illinois' stunning record of sentencing innocent people to death.
In 2007, this page reversed more than a century of editorial support for capital punishment. That decision was reached after a lot of soul-searching. We imagine Quinn is going through much the same process — with far greater stakes. He can change the law of the land, change history. We're confident that Quinn will come to the same conclusion we did four years ago: "The state can't have moral certainty that new injustices won't be heaped atop old ones."
The risk of wrongful execution is both inescapable and unacceptable. The death penalty cannot stand.
Illinois lawmakers who voted last month to end the death penalty didn't make the decision lightly. They'd all but stopped trying to fix a broken system that has sent at least 20 innocent men to death row. A moratorium on executions allowed them to sleep at night, but they knew it was a costly cop-out.
As long as the death penalty remains in place, the justice system must proceed as if executions could resume tomorrow. So the death penalty remains a chip in plea bargains, for example, and is a big factor in jury selection, since current law allows attorneys to exclude jurors who have strong feelings for or against capital punishment.
Earlier coverage from Illinois begins with this roundup of state activity.
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