”Now I ask each and every one of you, don`t kill Lawrence. Don`t do it. Don`t kill him,” a defense lawyer pleaded to a jury last week.
”If each and every one of you sentences him to death, he will die. This is it. This is the real thing.”
There were two Criminal Court murder trials on the same day last week. Both juries came back with the same verdict: Guilty. But only one of the two killers faced the possibility of getting the death penalty.
The first man was convicted of walking into a North Side hot dog stand with a pump shotgun, looking for someone to kill. He pointed the gun into a crowd of youngsters playing video games. A 15-year-old boy named Santos Martinez died in the spray of pellets that followed.
That man, who is 22 years old, had been convicted of killing someone once before and had been found guilty of a sexual assault, prosecutors said. He was not the one who faced the death penalty.
The second man was convicted of robbing a youth and his girlfriend as they sat in a car at the Kostner Avenue exit of the Eisenhower Expressway. He held a .22-caliber handgun to the victim`s head and the gun went off during the robbery. The victim, Richard Steinbrecher, died.
That second man, who was 20 years old, had never been convicted of a violent crime before.
He was the one who faced the death penalty.
Why didn`t the first man–who was older, who had a worse criminal background and who injured three other youths in addition to killing the teenager–also face the death penalty?
Because he did not commit murder during the course of another forcible felony. He had not killed for money. He had killed just for the sake of killing.
”It seems strange, doesn`t it?” said Michael Angarola, first assistant state`s attorney. ”Can you imagine explaining that to the relatives and loved ones of someone who has been killed?”
Criminal Court Judge Francis Mahon now has more than 30 murder cases on his courtroom agenda. ”I think it`s kind of illogical, frankly, that someone who sets out to kill someone on purpose–with premeditation–isn`t eligible for the death penalty,” he said, ”whereas someone who goes out to stick someone up, and they resist and there`s a struggle and the gun goes off, is eligible.”
But that is the case, according to the 1977 Illinois death penalty law. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the prior Illinois law because the death penalty was being ”wantonly and freakishly imposed,” said Richard J. Fitzgerald, chief judge of the Criminal Court.
”The person who imposed the death penalty 20 years ago was an individual,” the judge said. ”There were about 10 of us here at the Criminal Court then, and we all had different personalities. As a result, you had a great disparity (in who got the death penalty).
”I think that you probably have to have certain, specific guidelines before you can take a human life,” Fitzgerald said. He said the new law follows U.S. Supreme Court guidelines.
To get the death penalty now, a person must be at least 18 years old and must have committed the murder of a police officer, jail guard or firefighter who is on duty; the murder of more than one person; the murder of someone as a result of a hijacking; the contract murder of someone; the murder of a person under 12 years old; the murder of a witness; or the murder of someone during the commission of another forcible felony.
Keith Hoddenbach, a street gang member, did none of those. He drove through North Side streets on Dec. 11, 1984, looking for a rival gang member to kill.
Hoddenbach, of 2250 W. Melrose St., spotted one walking into the Max Red Hots stand at California Avenue and Cortland Street. But when he started firing, it wasn`t his rival who fell to the floor, with four shots straight through his heart. The victim was an innocent 15-year-old boy named Santos Martinez.
Only four months before, Martinez`s immigrant family had earned enough to buy their first house, a small but neatly kept North Side bungalow. Martinez had his own room for the first time in his life.
The day after the crime, his relatives sat stunned in the darkened house, staring at the candles they had burning. Martinez had been killed by a stranger in their new country, America.
Illinois legislators ”did as well as they could to distinguish generally the more heinous crimes” for the death penalty, said Hans Zeisel, a University of Chicago law professor. ”They missed this one.”
Zeisel, who opposes the death penalty under any circumstances, said that even the new laws have not stopped the death penalty from being arbitrary and unfair.
State Rep. Timothy Johnson (R., Urbana), who helped draft the law, agreed that the two cases point out that the death penalty law is ”not exactly equitable.”
”It`s a case example of how even the best of laws can`t cover every situation,” he said.
One of the factors that qualify a killer for the death penalty is a conviction for a second murder, whether the result of an earlier murder conviction or being found guilty of a double slaying. Hoddenbach almost made it. In 1980, he shot a man three times and killed him, said Assistant State`s Attorneys David Sabatini and Randy Rueckert.
He was charged with murder, but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. If he had been found guilty of murder instead–or if one of the other youths at the hot dog stand also had died–he would have qualified for the death penalty.
But that didn`t happen, so Hoddenbach faces imprisonment and will be sentenced next month. He will not sit through a death penalty hearing like the one 20-year-old Lawrence Andrews sat through last week.
Andrews, of 358 S. Kostner Ave., sat silently in a second-floor courtroom as his lawyer pleaded for his life.
”There is blood on Lawrence`s hand, and I`ll tell you something–once you get blood on your hands, it never comes off,” said his lawyer, public defender Donald Bertelle.
But Bertelle said, ”The only violent thing he`s ever done in his life is this one thing. . . . Please, he`s only a kid.”
The 12 men and women who listened were the same people who had convicted Andrews of the murder of Steinbrecher, 19, of Glenview.
Steinbrecher was with his 17-year-old girlfriend, on his way to his first job as a professional musician, when he was shot on Feb. 18, 1984.
Andrews ”killed a man for seven bucks,” Assistant State`s Atty. Dane Cleven, who prosecuted the case with Art Neville, told the jury. ”This is our system of justice, and we are here for justice.”
The jurors recessed, and when they returned, the courtroom was silent. They decided to spare Andrews` life.
”At first I doubted that he was going to make it,” said Andrews` 15-year-old brother, Robin. ”Now I`m sure he`s going to be all right. . . . I`m glad he`s in one piece.”
Zeisel said neither man should have faced death; prosecutor Angarola felt they both should have. To the families of the two young victims, it wouldn`t have changed the most important thing.
”There will always be a hollow place,” said Steinbrecher`s father, Richard. ”There`s still one bedroom that isn`t filled at home, and that`s it.”
Martinez`s sister, Rosalinda, said, ”We never stop talking or thinking and I am dreaming about him a lot, too. Dreaming is one of the things that makes me feel happy. Because then, I feel he`s still alive.”
