11-03-09 Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty- Compilation of Media Reports

8/7/2019 11-03-09 Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty- Compilation of Media Reports

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In a ceremony behind closed doors todayDemocraticGov. Pat Quinn signed a bill that will make Illinois the16th state to abolish the death penalty.

"I have concluded that our system of imposing thedeath penalty is inherently flawed," said Quinn in astatement issued after the signing.

"Since our experience has shown that there is no wayto design a perfect death penalty system, free from thenumerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictionsor discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that theproper course of action is to abolish it," he said.

It has been 11 years s ince a death sentence has beencarried out in the state. In 2000, then RepublicanGov. George Ryan, ordered a moratorium onexecutions fearing that the Illinois' death penaltysystem m ight be at risk of executing the innocent.Ryan had been an ardent supporter of the deathpenalty, but changed his m ind when he saw a risingnumber of exonerations of death row inmates inIllinois courts.

Foes of the death penalty had urged Quinn to s ign alaw to abolis h the executions completely.

The issue has been politically delicate for Quinn whohas always s aid that he supports the death penalty,but he's been concerned about how the system works.

The state legislature pass ed the ban in January, andthe governor had put off signing it to listen to voiceson both sides.

Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, IllinoisAttorney General Lisa Madigan and the families ofmurder victims encouraged the Governor to keep themos t severe penalty on the books.

A group of men wrongfully convicted, who were

cleared from death row when Ryan issued hismoratorium on the death penalty a decade ago, spokein favor of the ban.

"I think we're on the right side of history here," saidRep. Karen Yarbrough, a Democratic sponsor of thebill. "I appreciate the governor taking the time it tookto listen to the other voices out there. We all took time

to really look at this and we're standing on theshoulders of other legislators who have inched thisthing along."

Illilnois Gov. Pat QuinnAbolishes Death Penalty inClosed Ceremony

Fifteen people remain on death row in Illinois, butQuinn announced he would commute those s entencesto life without parole. The new law takes effect July 1.

"This is a turning point "says Shari Silbers tein,executive director of Equal Justice which advocatesfor the abolishm ent of the death penalty. "Illinois issigni ficant because it has had a moratorium onexecutions for 11 years, convened two studycommiss ions and enacted a series of reforms aimed atfixing the system. But still, exonerations continued,the costs went through the roof and victim's familymembers were left in limbo. Today sends a messagethat after all of that effort, the ultimate conclusion ofIllinois law makers was that it cannot be made towork."

A part of the bill provides that the funds that aregoing to be saved by repealing the death penalty are

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Illinois Abolishes Death Penalty; 16th State toEnd Executions


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going to be reallocated to services for victim'sfamilies and training for law enforcement.

"Illinois is the first state to do something positive forvictim's famil ies on public s afety with the funds thatwere previously wasted on the death penalty," saidSilberstein.

Nationwide, death penalty sentences have plunged totheir lowest levels in the last few years due to a

concern of the risk of executing the innocent, thehigh costs of capital punishment and fears over themethod of lethal injection used in each of the 35states that allow the death penalty.

Texas, which has had the mos t executions among allthe states, has had a dramatic drop from 48 sentencesin 2000 to only eight death sentences last year, saysRichard Dieter, the executive director of the DeathPenalty Information Center which opposes the deathpenalty. California, the state with the largest deathrow in the country, has not had an execution for overfive years.

"Illinois is being watched by the rest of the countrybecause it stopped the death penalty, reviewed it andultimately chose to abandon it. Other states have beenwatching Illinois , and are now considering legis lationto abolish the death penalty," says Dieter.

Other States Watch Illinois AfterDeath Penalty Abolished

Those states include, Maryland, Montana,Connecticut, Kansas and Florida.

"If these abolition votes continue, and a majority ofstates abolish the death penalty, then the SupremeCourt of the United States might find that there is aconsensus, or new s tandard of decency in thecountry that rejects the death penalty," he said.

In recent years the Supreme Court has narrowed thedeath penalty, abolishing it for juveniles and for thementally retarded.

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Illinois Abolishes The D eath Pena ltyby NPR STAFF AND WIRES

March 9, 2011

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death

penalty Wednesday, more than a decade after

the state imposed a moratorium on executionsout 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 "mostdifficult 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 thispoint, 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

Enlarge Seth Perlman/AP

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn speaks w ith reporters af ter signing

legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state at the

capitol in Springfield on Wednesday.


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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 personcouldn'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.

NPR's Cheryl Corley contributed to this report, which contains material from The Associated


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9 March 2011 Last updated at 19:33 GMT

Illinois abolishes the death penalty

Illinois has become the 16th US state to abolish the death penalty, after the governor

signed a bill making permanent a 10-year-old moratorium on executions.

Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill after spending two months consulting with victims' families,

prosecutors, religious leaders and others.

Former Governor George Ryan ordered a moratorium in 2000 amid concerns innocent people

could be executed.

Thirty-four states still have the death penalty.

'Right thing'In the state capital Springfield, Mr Quinn, a Democrat, said he had followed his conscience,

the Chicago Tribune reported.

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," he told reporters. "I think it's the right, just thing to

abolish the death penalty."

In a statement accompanying the bill signing, he wrote the Illinois death penalty system was

flawed and could lead to wrongful convictions.

Mr Quinn also commuted to life in prison the sentences of 15 death row inmates.


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Mr Ryan's move in 2000 came after more than a dozen condemned inmates were freed from

Illinois death row, some when journalists showed they had been wrongly convicted.

His successors, former Governor Rod Blagojevich and Mr Quinn, kept the moratorium in place

The Illinois legislature approved the ban two months ago, and it takes effect on 1 July.

The number of annual executions in the US has declined dramatically since the peak of 98 in

1999, to 46 last year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Since the US Supreme Court allowed capital punishment in 1976 after a brief national

moratorium, Texas has executed the most offenders, with 466.

More US & Canada stories

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BBC 2011The BBC is not responsible for thecontent of external sites. Read more.


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Illinois Death Penalty Abolished: Pat Quinn SignsDeath Penalty Ban, Clears Death Row

CHRISTOPHER WILLS 03/ 9/11 08:17 PM ET

Chicago News , Death Penalty Ban , Governor Pat Quinn , Illinois Death Penalty , Kwame Raoul , PatQuinn , Pat Quinn Death Penalty , Death Penalty Illinois , Illinois Death Penalty Abolished , IllinoisDeath Penalty Bill Signed , Karen Yarbrough, Illinois Death Penalty Ban ,Quinn DeathPenalty , Chicago News

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. After two decades of debate about the risk of executing an innocent person, Illinoisabolished the death penalty Wednesday, a decision that was certain to fuel renewed calls for other states todo the same.

Gov. Pat Quinn, a Democrat who has long supported capital punishment, looked drained moments aftersigning the historic legislation. Lawmakers sent him the measure back in January, but Quinn went throughtwo months of intense personal deliberation before acting. He called it the most difficult decision he hasmade as governor.

"If the system can't be guaranteed, 100-percent error-free, then we shouldn't have the system," Quinn said."It cannot stand."

Illinois becomes the 16th state in the nation without a death penalty more than a decade after former Gov.George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions out of fear that the justice system could make a deadlymistake.

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

with no hope of parole.In his comments, the governor returned often to the fact that 20 people sent to death row had seen theircases overturned after evidence surfaced that they were innocent or had been convicted improperly.

Death penalty opponents hailed Illinois' decision and predicted it would influence other states.

"This is a domino in one sense, but it's a significant one," said Mike Farrell, the former "MASH" star who isnow president of Death Penalty Focus in California.

The executive director of a national group that studies capital punishment said Illinois' move carries moreweight than states that halted executions but had not used the death penalty in many years.

"Illinois stands out because it was a state that used it, reconsidered it and now rejected it," said RichardDieter of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington.

New Jersey eliminated its death penalty in 2007. New Mexico followed in 2009, although new RepublicanGov. Susana Martinez wants to reinstate the death penalty.

In New York, a court declared the state's law unconstitutional in 2004.The U.S. is one of the few industrialized countries that still practices capital punishment. The EuropeanUnion, for instance, bans executions by any member nations.

Quinn's decision incensed many prosecutors and relatives of crime victims. Robert Berlin, the state'sattorney in DuPage County, west of Chicago, called it a "victory for murderers."

The governor reflected on the issue week after week, speaking with prosecutors, crime victims' families,death penalty opponents and religious leaders. He consulted retired Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu ofSouth Africa and met with Sister Helen Prejean, the inspiration for the movie "Dead Man Walking.


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Quinn "realized that it's a righteous and a moral decision to end this system that almost took my life," saidGordon "Randy" Steidl, who spent 12 years on death row after being wrongly convicted in the 1986 murderof two newlyweds.

In the future, "there won't be any more Randy Steidls that are standing in a court of law that are innocentand facing a sentence of death. At least they'll be alive to prove their innocence on down the road."

A Chicago woman whose teenage son was gunned down in 2006 said the killer, who has never beencaught, should not be allowed to breathe the same air she breathes.

"I am a Christian. I never believed in killing nobody else," Pam Bosley said, explaining her change of heartafter her son was shot outside a church. "But the pain you suffer every single day, I say take them out."

Quinn said capital punishment was too arbitrary. A prosecutor in one county might seek the death penalty,while another prosecutor dealing with a similar crime might not, he said. And death sentences might beimposed on minorities and poor people more often than on wealthy, white defendants.

A Gallup poll in October found that 64 percent of Americans favored the death penalty for someoneconvicted of murder, while 30 percent opposed it. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percentagepoints.

The high point of death penalty support, according to Gallup, was in 1994, when 80 percent were in favor.

Doubts about Illinois' death penalty grew steadily throughout the 1990s with each revelation of a personwrongly sentenced to die people like Anthony Porter.

Porter had ordered his last meal and even been fitted for burial clothes when, just 48 hours before hisexecution, lawyers won a stay to study the question of whether he was mentally capable of killing. Thatprovided time for a group of Northwestern University students to gather information proving Porter'sinnocence.

Illinois was also the place where Ryan called for clemency hearings for all death row inmates proceedingsthat involved a parade of people describing in heartbreaking detail how their children, parents, siblings andspouses died by violence.

Ultimately, Ryan told his staff, "I can't play God," and he cleared death row in 2003 by commuting 167 deathsentences to life in prison and pardoning four people.

That delivered a jolt to the death penalty debate that was felt around the world.

A few years earlier, the Republican governor had halted all executions, and his Democratic successorscontinued the moratorium. Illinois' last execution was in 1999.

On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers immediately began discussing legislation for a new, narrower deathpenalty. They said safeguards added to the system after Ryan cleared death row protections negotiated inpart by President Barack Obama when he was a state senator had eliminated any real danger of

executing an innocent person.

Republican Rep. Jim Durkin of Westchester predicted Quinn will pay a political price if he seeks re-electionin four years. Some terrible murder that cries out for the death penalty is bound to occur and grab voters'attention, he said.

Quinn said he would oppose any attempt to reinstate a new version of the death penalty. He also promisedto commute the sentence of anyone who might receive a death sentence between now and when themeasure takes effect on July 1, a spokeswoman said.

The governor sought to console those whose loved ones had been slain, saying the "family of Illinois" waswith them. He said he understands victims will never be healed.

Bill Sloop, a truck driver from Carthage, said he was saddened to think that taxpayers would have tocontinue feeding, clothing and caring for Daniel Ramsey, the death row prisoner who killed his 12-year-olddaughter and wounded her older sister in a 1996 shooting spree.

Quinn "shouldn't have done what he did," Sloop said.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan appealed directly to Quinn to veto the bill. Quinn's lieutenantgovernor, Sheila Simon, herself a former prosecutor, urged him to sign it.

Illinois has executed 12 men since 1977, when the death penalty was reinstated. The last person put todeath was Andrew Kokoraleis on March 17, 1999. At the time, the average length of stay on death row was13 years.

Kokoraleis, convicted of murdering and mutilating a 21-year-old woman, died by lethal injection.

___

Associated Press writers John O'Connor and Zachary Colman in Springfield and Deanna Bellandi, DonBabwin and Karen Hawkins in Chicago contributed to this report.


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Illinois Gov. Quinn signs bill banning death

penaltyWed, Mar 9 2011

By Andrew Stern and Mary Wisniewski

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The governor of Illinois signed a law on Wednesday

abolishing capital punishment, an issue that has roiled the state since a

series of wrongful convictions led to a decade-long moratorium on

executions.

When the law signed by Democratic Governor Pat Quinn takes effect on

July 1, Illinois will become the fourth state in the past two years after New

York, New Jersey and New Mexico to dispense with the death penalty.

The ultimate punishment will still be an option in 34 s tates and for federalinmates. Most Western democracies no longer carry out executions.

"In Illinois there is no ques tion in my mind that abolish ing the death

penalty is the right thing," in light of the exonerations, said Ron Safer, an

attorney who has defended death penalty cases.

"It is naive to think that we haven't executed an innocent person. We stop looking after they're executed."

Quinn also comm uted the death sentences of all 15 prisoners on the state's Death Row.

According to Amnesty International, there were 2,390 people executed in 25 nations in 2008, with China executing more

than half, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Pakistan and Iraq.

Illinois has not executed anyone s ince 1999 and former Republican Governor George Ryan gained international acclaim

from capital punishment opponents when he halted executions in 2000.

Ryan pronounced the state's death penalty system "broken," saying he was appalled by more than a dozen faultyconvictions exposed by the Chicago Tribune newspaper and Northwestern University journalism s tudents.

The errors were blamed on forced confessions , unreliable witnesses, and incompetent legal representation.

Two days before he left office in 2003, Ryan cleared the state's Death Row by commuting to life in prison the sentences of

164 inmates.

"No state had tried harder to fix its death penalty system, but after 10 years it became patently clear that it was broken

beyond repair," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, in a s tatement.

Cox said this is also true in other death penalty states, including Connecticut, Maryland and Montana, where a death penalty

ban is under consideration.

"Governor Quinn has shown great human rights leadership by recognizing the wisdom of abolishing an antiquated,

ineffective and inhumane punishment."

Barack Obama, then a Democratic state senator in Illinois, was am ong the legislators who engineered subsequentreforms that included videotaping of confessions .

Quinn invited both sides to discuss whether he should s ign the bill, or modify it. Prosecutors in the s tate and relatives of

murder victims urged him to keep the death penalty for the mos t heinous crimes, while opponents including Sis ter Helen

Prejean lobbied him to sign the law abolishing the practice.

The number of executions in the United States dropped 12 percent last year to 46, and were down from 98 in 1999,

according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The Center said there have been 138 exonerations of Death Row

inmates s ince 1973.

(Reporting by Mary Wisniewski and Andrew Stern; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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What killed Illinois' death penaltyIt wasn't the question of morality but the question of

accuracy that led state to abolish capital punishment

March 10, 2011 | By Steve Mills , Tribune reporter

If there was one moment when Illinois' death penalty began to die, it was on Feb. 5, 1999, when a

man named Anthony Porter walked out of jail a free man.

Sitting in the governor's mansion, George Ryan watched Porter's release on television and

wondered how a man could come within 50 hours of being executed, only to be set free by the

efforts of a journalism professor, his students and a private investigator.

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"And so I turned to my wife, and I said, how the hell does that happen? How does an innocent man

sit on death row for 15 years and gets no relief," Ryan recalled last year. "And that piqued my

interest, Anthony Porter."

To be sure, by the time Porter was set free, the foundation of Illinois' death penalty system already

had begun to erode by the steady stream of inmates who had death sentences or murder

convictions vacated: Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez in the Jeanine Nicarico case, the

men known as the Ford Heights Four, Gary Gauger.

But for decades, the debate over capital punishment rarely strayed from whether it was right or

wrong, a moral argument that was waged mostly by a narrow group of attorneys and abolition

supporters that could be easily dismissed. Public opinion polls showed little movement. Death

sentences and executions hit record levels.

Inmates like the serial killer John Wayne Gacy, whose guilt was never in question, were put to

death and caused little controversy. But when a miscarriage of justice was discovered and a death

row inmate was set free, the police and prosecutors contended that it was an isolated incident, ananomaly. They got little argument.

In November 1998, the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University hosted 29

exonerated death row inmates at a conference, putting a human face to the death penalty's

errors. Then, with Porter's case still in the spotlight, plus a series of stories in the Chicago Tribune

later that year that illuminated deep frailties in the state's system of capital punishment, the debate

over the death penalty was transformed.

Suddenly, it was about accuracy. No longer were the mistakes anecdotal. The problems were

systemic.

Opposition to the death penalty began to win new supporters, people who looked at the issue

pragmatically, not just morally, and were dismayed by the mistakes. Politicians no longer saw the

issue as a third rail with voters. Ryan, who declared a halt to all executions in 2000, found it did

not cost him politically.

You are here: ChicagoTribune.com Collections Death Penalty

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A decade after Ryan declared a moratorium, 61 percent of voters questioned in a poll did not

even know the state still had a death penalty, reflecting a stalemate of sorts that had emerged

between supporters of abolition and those who wanted to bring back capital punishment. No one

was being put to death, yet death row again was receiving inmates, though at a slower pace than

before the Ryan moratorium.

Had Republican Bill Brady won the November general election instead of Democrat Pat Quinn, the

state still would have a death penalty, and the new governor almost certainly would have lifted the

moratorium and allowed executions to resume.

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Ultimately, supporters of abolition in the General Assembly frustrated that sufficient reform had

not been enacted and stung by the costs of trials and appeals voted to abolish the death

penalty. On Wednesday, Quinn signed abolition into law and commuted the sentences of 15

inmates who had been sentenced to death since the moratorium.

"That isolated image of Anthony Porter is crucial," said Lawrence Marshall, a former legal director

the Center on Wrongful Convictions and a key player in the abolition of the death penalty. "But it

only makes a difference when it comes amidst all of those other incidents. It shows (the problems

weren't) isolated. This was a trend."

With Quinn's signature, Illinois became the fourth state to abandon the death penalty over the lastdecade, and the isolation of the use of capital punishment, mostly in the South, is a national trend

said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which opposes

capital punishment.

The New Jersey Legislature voted to drop the death penalty in 2007. A New York appeals court

ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 2004. And in 2009, the New Mexico Legislature voted to

repeal capital punishment; Gov. Bill Richardson signed the bill into law.

Other states have convened panels to study the death penalty and have considered legislation to

end it, prompted by the exonerations of condemned inmates; capital punishment's high cost,

particularly in a down economy; and the widening support for life in prison without parole as an

alternative sentence, Dieter said.

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opinion

Editorial: Make

Colorado next toend death penalty

By The Denver Post

Posted: 03/13/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

Illinois last week became the 16th state in theunion to end capital punishment. Coloradoshould become the 17th.

Unfortunately, there's no effort afoot inColorado's statehouse to end our unfortunateand long run with the death penalty.

In 2009, a bill that would have eliminated thedeath penalty in Colorado and used expectedsavings to pay for the investigation of unsolvedhomicides cleared the House. But its fate hungon uncertainty. Gov. Bill Ritter wouldn't even tell

Coloradans where he stood on the bill, or on thedeath penalty. Eventually, the bill died in theSenate.

With Republicans now controlling the House,there's been no talk of resurrecting the issue. And when he was running for office last fall, Gov.

John Hickenlooper said, in response to a DenverPost questionnaire, that he thought the deathpenalty should be "restricted" but opposed itsrepeal.

Yet in Illinois, lawmakers and others know all toowell the dangers inherent in carrying out thedeath penalty. In 2000, then-Gov. George Ryanplaced a moratorium on executions after a seriesof death row inmates were exonerated.

Sometimes, an innocent person is condemned todie. Watching prisoners walk free after beingcleared of a crime by some scientificdevelopment, such as DNA testing, has becomealmost routine.

Last week, Gov. Pat Quinn signed the death

penalty ban, while also commuting the sentencesof the 15 inmates on death row. They will servelife in prison without parole. Illinois lastperformed an execution in 1999.

Quinn spent two months weighing whether tosign the bill, calling it the "most difficultdecision" he's had to make as governor,according to a story on Politico.com.

The Denver Post has long opposed the deathpenalty. We believe that death is an ineffectivesentence for a society that should value life.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, in thepast, has made the case for the death penalty bysaying it's crucial in discouraging future horrificcriminal behavior. Yet there is very lit tleevidence that the death penalty discourages

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violent crime.

He also contends the only deterrent some violentinmates have to murdering a guard or fellowinmate is the threat of the death penalty. Thatargument is more difficult to bat down.

When lawmakers were contemplating capitalpunishment in 2009, we wondered if someopponents of the bill would support greaterlimits on the death penalty short of its fullabolition. For example, what if the state madeexceptions in a death-penalty ban for those whokill witnesses in a court case, which underminesthe foundation of our legal system, or thosealready serving a life sentence who then kill aprison guard?

We'd prefer an outright ban on the deathpenalty, but maybe some type of compromisethat severely curtails its already limited use inColorado would be a good start.

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11-03-09 Illinois Abolishes the Death Penalty- Compilation of Media Reports