The Washington Post
CHICAGO — After two years of study, a bipartisan panel appointed by Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan has concluded that the state applies the death penalty too often and that a thorough overhaul is needed to ensure that innocent people are not killed.
The commission, made up of both opponents and proponents of the death penalty, offered 85 recommendations that would reduce the number of defendants eligible for a death sentence and alter the way death penalty cases are investigated and tried. These include reducing, from 20 to five, the number of offenses that warrant execution and requiring that all interrogations of suspects in capital cases be videotaped.
Capital punishment would be banned in the case of convictions based on the testimony of a single witness, a jailhouse informant or an accomplice without other evidence. A statewide oversight panel of judges and prosecutors was recommended to review local prosecutors’ decisions to seek the death penalty.
Separate from the recommendations, which would require action by the state legislature, a majority of the 14-member panel supported outlawing executions altogether.
"Fix the capital punishment system or abolish it," commission co-chairman Thomas P. Sullivan, a former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told a packed news conference Monday. "There is no other principled course."
One of 38 states that allow the death penalty, Illinois has been at the forefront of reform efforts since Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions two years ago, after he became convinced the system was precariously close to executing the innocent. Since 1977, the state has released 13 people from death row after they were found to be wrongfully convicted. Twelve were executed over the same period.
Groups on both sides of the death penalty debate took familiar stances on the report.
"This is a landmark report," said William Schultz, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It can’t possibly be dismissed."
Particularly troubling to some supporters of the death penalty was the recommendation to reduce the current list of 20 circumstances that warrant the death penalty to these five: murdering multiple victims, killing a police officer or firefighter, killing an officer or inmate in a correctional institution, murdering to obstruct justice or torturing the victim.
"The legislature is not going to take rape murder, burglary murder and robbery murder off the table. Reality creeps in here at some point," said Dudley Sharp, resource director for Justice for All, which lobbies on crime issues across the country.
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