The Illinois House on Thursday narrowly approved a measure to abolish the death penalty, a decade after the state put executions on hold after convictions for 13 men on death row were overturned.
The bill now moves to the Senate, which appears to have the votes to pass it on to Gov. Pat Quinn. Quinn hasn’t said if he will sign it – but he has kept in place the state’s death penalty freeze.
Proponents say they have momentum, but they are fighting the clock. If they don’t get final passage before the new Legislature is seated Wednesday, they will have to start from scratch under a new, more conservative assembly. The Senate can’t consider the bill until it reconvenes Monday.
The measure passed the House with the bare-minimum 60 “yes” votes needed. It took two attempts at the vote, and followed an emotional floor debate in which opponents laid out chilling details of murders committed by the state’s current 15 death row inmates, and supporters invoked the Ten Commandments.
Murderers who are sentenced to prison instead of death “work out, watch TV, read books, take classes,” said Rep. Dennis Reboletti, R-Addison. “You know where their victims are?” Reboletti said. “… They deserve the ultimate penalty.”
Proponents of ending the death penalty said there is no way to ensure the innocent won’t be executed.
“Murder is barbaric, whether it’s committed by an individual or committed by a state,” said Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago.
The soul-searching caused by the issue was evident in the debate and in the two House votes. Members of both parties were on both sides of the issue. Several professed to believe in capital punishment in concept, but said they feared the state couldn’t competently carry it out. The first floor vote failed and the second one passed, hours later, after several lawmakers switched their votes.
“It’s an issue people struggle with,” said Jeremy Schroeder, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Former Gov. George Ryan, a Republican and death penalty supporter, declared the freeze on executions in 2000, after courts overturned death sentences for 13 men in Illinois.
Ryan later said he believed there was no way to guarantee that innocent people wouldn’t be executed under any capital punishment system, and he commuted the death sentences of all 167 Illinois inmates on death row at that time.
Defendants have continued to be sentenced to death – 15 are on death row currently – but with no certainty that those sentences will ever be carried out.
The bill is SB3539.
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
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