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Why the death penalty?
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A special commission in Illinois issued detailed advice on Monday to Governor George Ryan on improving the way the death penalty is administered in his state. Ryan, a Republican, set up the bipartisan commission two years ago after imposing a moratorium on executions in the state. Illinois, since reinstating capital punishment in 1977, had executed 12 people, while it had been forced to release 13 who were under sentence of death. Investigations by journalism students at Northwestern University and by the Chicago Tribune had revealed pervasive flaws in the state's capital punishment system. At the time he appointed the commission, Ryan said that "until I can be sure that no innocent man or woman is facing lethal injection, no one will meet that fate."
The commission's report contains numerous recommendations, mostly sound and mostly unsurprising. They include videotaping interrogations, making fewer crimes eligible for the death penalty, asking a state board to review local prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty, requiring judges to concur in death decisions by juries, and reining in the use of uncorroborated testimony by informants and eyewitnesses. If enacted, such changes would significantly reduce the scope and randomness of capital punishment and significantly lower the risk of wrongful convictions and executions.
As the commission notes, however, they would not eliminate that risk. In fact, the report states clearly that the certainty Ryan demands is unattainable: "The commission was unanimous in the belief that no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death." Although it was not the focus of the commission's work, a majority of the members favored abolishing capital punishment entirely: "because of moral concerns, because of a conclusion that no system can or will be constructed which sufficiently guarantees that the death penalty will be applied without arbitrariness or error, or because of a determination that the social resources expended on capital punishment outrun its benefits."
Ryan, whose tenure as governor has been tarnished by a corruption probe, and who is not seeking re-election, has said he will consider commuting his state's pending death sentences on his way out of office. The commission's report offers ample reason for him to determine that old death sentences should not be carried out. It should also spur legislators, in Illinois and elsewhere, to reconsider whether death sentences ought to be imposed in future.
The commission's report contains numerous recommendations, mostly sound and mostly unsurprising. They include videotaping interrogations, making fewer crimes eligible for the death penalty, asking a state board to review local prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty, requiring judges to concur in death decisions by juries, and reining in the use of uncorroborated testimony by informants and eyewitnesses. If enacted, such changes would significantly reduce the scope and randomness of capital punishment and significantly lower the risk of wrongful convictions and executions.
As the commission notes, however, they would not eliminate that risk. In fact, the report states clearly that the certainty Ryan demands is unattainable: "The commission was unanimous in the belief that no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death." Although it was not the focus of the commission's work, a majority of the members favored abolishing capital punishment entirely: "because of moral concerns, because of a conclusion that no system can or will be constructed which sufficiently guarantees that the death penalty will be applied without arbitrariness or error, or because of a determination that the social resources expended on capital punishment outrun its benefits."
Ryan, whose tenure as governor has been tarnished by a corruption probe, and who is not seeking re-election, has said he will consider commuting his state's pending death sentences on his way out of office. The commission's report offers ample reason for him to determine that old death sentences should not be carried out. It should also spur legislators, in Illinois and elsewhere, to reconsider whether death sentences ought to be imposed in future.
