Death Penalty In Illinois
There is a definite problem concerning the death penalty in Illinois. Many deal with problems concerning the rights of the defendant while being on trial for murder; others deal with a convict’s rights after they are found guilty and sentenced to death. Should a convict have the right to re-trial if there isn’t an adequate amount of circumstantial evidence? Should there be a criterion that has to be met by evidence in order to pursue the death penalty or should a court just be able to kill someone as long as they please?
On March 9, 2000, George Ryan appointed a commission to determine whether or not Illinois capital punishment was fair and accurate. Many reforms were taken into action in the attempt to rid the Illinois death penalty of any flaws. I believe that this 24- month process was a big waste of time and effort. How exactly can the Illinois court system be re-defined to make it entirely fair and at the same time accurate? How many times have you made a resolution that was deemed fair and accurate? Probably never!
The actions taken to rid the court systems of problems concerning the death penalty have never really been resolved, they have just came up somewhere else and in a different way. The idea of the court system finding a defendant not-guilty and sentencing them to death is completely ridiculous, considering they are being charged with killing two or more people. But one can be sentenced to death if they kill someone of higher authority than a normal citizen; we are talking about an officer, or a firefighter etc. This is also ridiculous, because why are their lives held up on a higher pedestal than any other person. Although I do feel, that once someone kills, it won’t take much for them to kill again. So why should the court system look past the people who have only killed one person? Do they really deserve to live any more than people who have killed more than one person? I would have to say no on that one. The Illinois court system has only been redefined once, and I believe that the court system should appoint a commission on a scheduled basis to re-determine the court system and it’s procedures. This should be done to ensure that accuracy and fairness prevails.
Even though most Illinois citizens support capital punishment there are still people who disagree with its entirety. People feel that the commission’s focused on individual cases, and because of this there is no possible way to ensure that there can be an accurate solution to these problems.
The state of Illinois attempts to seek fairness within the death penalty by issuing a stat- wide Commission, which includes: an attorney general, three prosecutors, and a retired judge. They all look over the local state’s attorney’s judgments within a death penalty case, which encompasses the next issue. How can the death penalty be fair when there is a commission that looks over every case? What’s the point of having a trial if the head commission is going to make the final decision in each case? Pre-trail hearings shouldn’t decide if a defendant is worthy of the death penalty. The relevance of information should be determined within the trail itself. Bias in the court system would then be harder to create, because the court would not know what type of evidence would be brought to trial. In some instances, evidence is tossed out because of its unreliability. What would happen if an eyewitness testified that the defendant is not guilty and specifies evidence that was earlier deemed as unreliable?
In today’s court system, information about the defendant’s past is relevant to the trial itself. In other words, the court’s decision on whether or not a human is guilty of a crime is relevant within the death penalty trial itself. The decision to sentence someone to the death penalty should not have anything to do with their past (before the crime was committed). People feel that it is immoral and unconstitutional to look into someone’s past during a trial. Some believe that pre-trial hearings are everything but fair.
Also it is unfair and inaccurate for the state to view other death sentences in an attempt to aid in the decision process pertaining to the death penalty. To look at a past trial in order to aid further decision on a present trial is wrong. How many people do you know have some kind of a past? Judges would be making their ultimate decisions with the help of evidence from past cases that are irrelevant to the trial at hand. The death penalty should be abolished altogether. There has been steps made fixing the death penalty’s flaws but it seems that these problems are far from gone. Harry A Blackmun states “ The court in my view has engaged in a futile effort to balance the constitutional demands…human error is inevitable and because our criminal justice system is less than perfect, searching appellate review of death sentences and their underlying convictions is a prerequisite to a constitutional death penalty scheme” (69).
The death penalty abroad is a difficult subject to discuss. The significance of it brings difficulty to the governor and his commission when trying to make new proposals that are correcting the ones that were first brought into effect. The Commission has the right to discuss openly their thoughts on each topic within the death penalty. The Governor has the final decision on whether or not to put each proposal into effect. Because of this it took almost 24 months for George Ryan’s Commission to develop these guidelines, which focused on finally making the Illinois death penalty fair and just. However the problems that were trying to be solved never really were.
After writing these proposals the Commission agreed that if the death penalty still seems to be the same it should be abolished altogether. Many skeptics wonder why the death penalty in Illinois hasn’t been eradicated yet. Skeptics say that in fact the same problems are resurfacing, creating new problems for the Illinois death penalty Commission to deal with. Some feel that the death penalty is morally wrong: Some feel that the death penalty is a waste of scarce resources. It costs between two and seven million dollars just to execute on convict. Some skeptics feel that the proposals made by the Commission, which were vital to absolute reform, would never be fully active.
According to Scott Turow a world famous author of law states that the capital jurisprudence isn’t in order:One reason our capital jurisprudence is such a mess is because even the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, who have long experience in making and sticking with hard decisions, have waffled. Harry A. Blackmun is hardly alone. In the last twenty-five years, Justices Stewart, White, Powell, and Stevens have also taken varying positions when confronted with the question of whether or not capital punishment as currently practiced is constitutionally tolerable (115).
This provides further reason to abolish the death penalty. When confronted these people who have served the U.S. Supreme Court for at least twenty-five years agree that the death penalty should be abolished. Turow also served for the Commission with an attempt to reach new proposals.
Turow himself states that the death penalty today is such a mess that it should be abolished. Why would people who have served as justices of the U.S. Supreme Court want to get rid of the death penalty all together? One reason is that they have had years of experience with the death penalty and have been as close to its purpose and nature as humanly possible. They have finally come to the conclusion that there is no righteous reasoning behind the death penalty. The death penalty and all of its components are inevitable to failure (114-15).
I agree with the Abolitionists views regarding the death penalty. We should expose the death penalty to the citizens of Illinois. The media proves to be a major factor of the death penalty. Through the media citizens are becoming effectively aware of reoccurring problems within Illinois’ justice system. After all, this is truly a way for everyone in Illinois to become aware of what is happening within our court system. For example if people could see an authority of the Illinois justice system talking negatively about the death penalty there would be a greater chance for people to feel concerned instead of indifferent. Citizens just don’t understand the death penalty’s entirety. Most people focus on cases where the defendant has raped and killed a little girl. They would rather see him killed then sympathize for his claim of innocence. Is it righteous for the court system to kill? Isn’t that just committing the same heinous crime that we are trying to stop from happening?
We shouldn’t really question ourselves about the death penalty being fair or not considering the various mistaken convictions within Illinois Justice System. On December 15, 2002 George Ryan pardoned three-dozen men from the death penalty and commuted several more to life without parole. Convictions were made on the basis of an officer’s false testimony. Life without parole should replace the death penalty in Illinois. Not only is it cheaper for an inmate to live in jail throughout his natural life but also it is more humane. Besides the system can’t serve justice after someone is already dead. The government’s vigilant actions aren’t deterring Illinois from crime; the death penalty is state-sanctioned killing that only continues the cycle of violence. In fact Illinois crime rate is higher than ever.
I feel that the commission should have never brought the victims’ families into the research that was taking place during the moratorium. It is bad enough that some of the victims’ families have sat through re-trials and have witnessed unbearable information time and time again. Why should the families have to suffer any more because of the justice system? Many would agree that true closure isn’t possible for the families, according to the professional web site Progress Report “studies have shown that the continual process of appeals necessary to insure the due process…force families to confront the gruesome details of the crime many times over, making it impossible to get on with their lives.” The death penalty should be abolished if the justice system has to learn from families who have nothing to do with the crime at all.
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22 year old college junior
