Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn today signed into law a historic ban on the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the sentences of 15 death row inmates to life without parole.
The governor said he followed his conscience. He said he believed in signing the bill he also should “abolish the death penalty for everyone,” including those already on death row.
“Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history,” Quinn told reporters afterward. “I think it’s the right, just thing to abolish the death penalty.”
Quinn signed the legislation during a private ceremony in his Capitol office surrounded by longtime opponents of capital punishment in a state where flaws in the process led to the exoneration of numerous people sentenced to death.
“For me, this was a difficult decision, quite literally the choice between life and death,” Quinn wrote in his signing statement. “This was not a decision to be made lightly, or a decision that I came to without deep personal reflection.”
“Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it,” Quinn wrote. “With our broken system, we cannot ensure justice is achieved in every case.”
“For the same reason, I have also decided to commute the sentences of those currently on death row to natural life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole or release,” the governor wrote.
A small group of lawmakers also was on hand, including lead sponsors Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood, and Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago. Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, and House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago also attended. Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who lobbied Quinn to sign the ban, was there.
The ban comes about 11 years after then-Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions after 13 condemned inmates were cleared since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977. Ryan, a Republican, cited a Tribune investigative series that examined each of the state’s nearly 300 capital cases and exposed how bias, error and incompetence undermined many of them.
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17 Responses
Typical dumb Liberal.–“Hamerachem al HaRa’im, SoFo LeHisachzar Al HaTovim.”
Two different rabbis have warned me that Jews should never serve on a jury on a capital case in the US because the standards for executing people here fall below minimal Noachide standards. The fact that people kept getting convicted and sentenced to death when they weren’t guilty shows that this is not merely a theoretical concern. Quinn’s predecessor Ryan saw this, and finally the legislature agreed.
Agree with CharlieHall. They can’t be trusted with capital punishment; take it away from them.
I personally asked Rav Moses Feinstein, ZT”L, about lobbying for the death penalty many years ago, and he answered–“Definitely, YES.”
He pointed out to me the Talmud, Masecta Sanhedrin, which states that when there are many murders in society, all the normal requirements for a death penalty are suspended, and the government can kill anyone who they reasonable decide is a murderer–even shildren.
charliehall:
Rabbi Susan and Rabbi Jeannette?
charliehall:
The Noahide standards are quite lenient for conviction of a capital crime. The U.S. standards are quite restrictive for conviction and sentencing to capital punishment. It is far above the Noahide standards. Even in death penalty states, a very small percentage of convicted murderers are actually executed (or even sentenced to death.) Rabbi Moshe Feinstein has a teshuva to the governor of a state encouraging having a death penalty.
@charliehall Rav Moshe has a well known on civil capital punishment. Although it may vary state to state. But if you are on the jury you can prevent executions in cases where the guilt is at that level of doubt. Also murder has actually gone down in both absolute and relative terms in the last 10 years, changing circumstances may have changed things.
Recent developments in DNA testing have clearly demonstrated – in Illinois, especially, but also elsewhere – that many people convicted and sentenced to death before DNA testing was available were wrongfully convicted. If I recall correctly, the previous Illinois governor suspended all executions when it became clear that approximately one-third of all Illinois death-row inmates would be exonerated by DNA evidence. That is a huge and shocking rate of error by juries acting without DNA evidence.
Does anyone think that Rav Moshe Feinstein would, knowing about DNA evidence and the history of wrongful convictions that DNA evidence has revealed, stand by his pre-DNA opinions?
“It is far above the Noahide standards.”
False. The gemara in Sanhedrin requires an eyewitness. The US executes people all the time on the basis of circumstantial evidence. That is one reason why we have so many wrongful convictions.
Given the general lack of integrity of Illinois courts, it is unlikely that the fact that someone is convicted there proves anything. Indeed, with its reliance on paid informers (i.e. people who receive something in returning for saying what the prosecutor wants), it is dubious if any American criminal conviction should be relied on as proof of guilt.
They could clean up their corrupt government, but it is easier to eliminate capital punishment than to institute an honest government.
9. charliehall says:
March 9, 2011 at 7:48 pm
“It is far above the Noahide standards.”
False. The gemara in Sanhedrin requires an eyewitness.
Actually, that is false. The gemaros to which you refer are speaking of the standard that Bais Din needs to execute a Ben Noach. Bnai Noach theselves, as part of their mitzva of Din, are only enjoined to set up a court system, but not how it has to run. If the Dinim that they set up say that one can execute based on circumstancial evidence, that is just fine.
In all the cases that have been reviewed and reversed in Illinois (and I believe this is true across the country as well) there is not a single case of someone actually being executed, and then exonerated post post execution. There is already a lengthy appeal and review process in which all these issues are addressed and found. The average time that elapses from committing of a crime and being executed was somewhere around 16 years. During those 16 years, all those errors have been caught. There is no need to remove the death penalty as an option on behalf of the wrongly convicted, because the inherent delays built into the system have always proven to be enough to catch those errors.
To nfgo3: The reason the former governor suspended the death penalty was because an ethics investigation was getting closer to his office. This RINO wanted to distact attention from that and get the (very liberal here in Chicago) media to fall in love with him again, as he felt that would help his chances in his fundraising scandal. It obviously didn’t help, because the gentelman in question has been sitting in jail for the last three years.
According to that logic we should abolish life in prison because people are wrongfully convicted all the time. Especially since many opponents of the death penalty claim life in prison is worse.
The problem here is not the death penalty, the problem is how it is applied. No one should get the death penalty unless we are 100% sure they committed the crime. Are there cases were there is 100% certainty? Yes. Nidal Hassan comes to mind, and I am sure there are hundreds of not thousands of other cases where we are 100% sure the person committed the crime.
No. 12: US Army Major Nidal Hassan is a perfectly wrong example of a case where there is 100% certainty about guilt. If he offers an insanity defense (or even if he does not), can we ever be 100% sure about his sanity or insanity? There are many events – crimes and otherwise – which we humans cannot ever understand 100%. That is why the death penalty is an unwise policy for most crimes.
That is not my point we know 100% he committed the crime.
There are many events – crimes and otherwise – which we humans cannot ever understand 100%.
According to that logic all the Nuremberg criminals should not have been prosecuted because we cannot understand their motives.
Also I can guarantee you Hitler was insane especially after the July 20th plot on his life. If you read personal accounts of people close to him, he clearly was not stable after that. So maybe Hitler could have found a some self hating jewish lawyer to help him plead insanity, if he had not committed suicided.
If the Dinim that they set up say that one can execute based on circumstancial evidence, that is just fine.
“A heathen is executed on the ruling of one judge, on the testimony of one witness, without a formal warning, on the evidence of a man, but not of a woman, even if he [the witness] be a relation.” -Sanhedrin 57b, Soncino translation.
“In all the cases that have been reviewed and reversed in Illinois (and I believe this is true across the country as well) there is not a single case of someone actually being executed, and then exonerated post post execution.”
False. Ethel Rosenberg is probably the most notorious example.
A few points:
No. 11: You are correct that the Illinois governor who suspended the death penalty was a target of an investigation, and he may have suspended the death penalty out of his own self-interested sympathy for convicts, as he was about to become one (though not for a capital crime). But his stated reason for his action was correct – that there is an unacceptable level of error in criminal prosecutions that makes it morally reprehensible to impose an irreversible punishment – death.
No. 12: You are correct that without the death penalty, we would still have wrongful convictions that result in life sentences, but life sentences are not irreversible if and when wrongful verdicts are discovered.
No. 14: The “100%” certainty standard is unknown in US criminal law. Criminal convictions are valid if proved “beyond a reasonable doubt. Your suggestion that we could adopt a “100%” certainty standard is unprecedented, if not unsound.
Your first sentence (in comment 14) lacks an antecedent, but if you are talking about the Nidal Hassan killings, you do not understand that under American law, if a killer is insane, he has not committed a murder. That is little comfort to the families of his victims, but we Americans, as a society, recognize the subtle and painful difference between a murder (i.e., an intentional killing) and the act of a crazy person.
As for the prosecutions of Nuremberg, I did not speak of 100% certainty, you did. Special crimes – the killings of millions of innocent people – call for special standards of justice, and I am satisfied that the death sentences issued at Nuremberg were just.
As for your suggestion that there is a “self-hating Jewish lawyer” who would defend Hitler, I think you are merely trying to smear Jewish defense lawyers. There are a small handful or rabbis (one of them visited Ahmadinejad recently) who have spoken of the Holocaust as part of Hashem’s plan. Those rabbis are indeed misguided (to put it mildly), but I don’t purport to know whether they are “self-hating.”
There are certain situations where we know for sure someone killed someone. If you start doubting reality we can say how do you know you are really a doctor or whatever you are.
I do not agree murderers should be let off for insanity. No one who murders someone is sane. In that moment of murder they are crazy.
You still fail to address my point. If you want to apply insanity then it has to apply across the board. Hitler was insane, there were lots of people tried at the various Nuremberg trials and I have no doubt that there were lots of insane people killed, which apparently is a problem with you.
The NK ppl who visited Iran are reshayim and maybe not consciously but they are self hating Jews, I am smearing a lot of Jewish defense lawyers who have defended awful nazi war criminals. They should be ashamed of themselves.