Convicted killer Charles Walker says he wants to die, and Illinois this week is ready to oblige.
Walker`s decision to choose lethal injection over years of additional appeals is pushing the state to its first execution since 1962-despite concerns by some critics about the state`s 13-year-old death-penalty law, which faces yet another important test in the courts later this year, and the manner of execution, which will be used for the first time here.
There is a sense Walker`s execution would start Illinois down a road from which it would be difficult to return once it joins the 14 other states that have resumed executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
But the legal impact of Walker`s execution, now scheduled for 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at Stateville prison near Joliet, is likely to be much less than what some death-penalty foes fear and its proponents hope.
Lawyers say Walker`s death won`t set off a stampede of executions that would quickly clear out Death Row in Illinois; nor is it likely to shorten the time it will take for the appeals of the other 124 inmates now on Death Row to move through the courts.
”But it will bring home to people on Death Row and people throughout the state that Illinois is serious about executing people,” said Alan Raphael, a law professor at Loyola University and an attorney who represents inmates under sentence of death.
What opponents of capital punishment fear is that the courts will be less likely to strike down the state`s death-penalty statute after it has been used.
”I think that once you execute somebody, you really want to find out that you did the right thing,” said Patricia Vader, director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty. ”You`d hate to think that you did the wrong thing. I think it would be egg on a lot of people`s faces if a court said the statute is unconstitutional, but Charles Walker is dead.”
Unless the courts or Gov. James Thompson order a delay, Walker would be the first person executed under a death-penalty statute approved by the state legislature in 1977 and upheld by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1978. So far, legal efforts to block his execution have failed.
Last week, the federal courts declined to bar the execution while lawyers challenge the legality and reliability of the state`s $24,900 lethal injection machine on behalf of other Death Row inmates.
Walker was convicted of killing a young couple during a robbery near Mascoutah in 1983.
In Illinois, the death sentence may be imposed on people 18 years old or older who have been convicted of killing a police officer, a firefighter or a prison guard or a prison inmate. It also may be imposed on someone convicted of a murder while committing another serious crime, killing a child under the age of 12 in an exceptionally brutal manner, killing two or more victims or killing a witness to prevent him or her from testifying.
Walker is scheduled to become the first person executed not because his appeals have been exhausted but because he resisted legal intervention on his behalf after his first, automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court was turned down in 1985.
If other executions follow, it will be more because the appeals of other inmates have been just about exhausted in the federal courts, said James Haddad, a Northwestern University law professor.
”But in Indiana, when Steven Judy was electrocuted, there wasn`t any rush to mass executions,” Haddad said.
Judy, who died in Indiana`s electric chair in 1981, was the first person executed in that state after it reinstated the death-penalty in 1977. The second, William Vandiver, was executed in 1985. No one has been executed since.
Judy and Vandiver, both convicted killers, also chose to abandon appeals. There are 49 men and 2 women now on Indiana`s Death Row.
Among other neighboring states, three-Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan-have no death penalty.
Missouri uses the same type of lethal-injection machine that Illinois intends to use Wednesday.
Missouri has executed five convicted killers since its current death-penalty law was approved by the legislature in 1977. Four have been executed this year-the latest, a man convicted of five murders, was put to death on Aug. 31. There are 71 men and 2 women awaiting execution in that state.
Haddad and other lawyers also don`t think that Walker`s execution will shorten the time it takes the courts to consider the appeals of other inmates. Most inmate appeals, lawyers say, raise issues specific to their trials-the competence of the trial lawyer, allegations of misconduct by judge or prosecutor, claims of error during the sentencing hearing.
More important to the fate of other Death Row inmates in Illinois is whether the U.S. Supreme Court decides to review a decision in May by the U.S. Court of Appeals based in Chicago to uphold the constitutionality of the state`s death-penalty law in a case involving Charles Silagy, another convicted killer.
It was the first time that the statute had been ruled constitutional in the federal courts, and if the high court agrees, an important legal question will have been resolved.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court overturned a 1989 decision by a U.S. District Court judge in Danville who said the law was unconstitutional because it gave prosecutors too much discretion in deciding when to seek the death penalty. The appeals court disagreed, saying the law provides all of the constitutional protections required by the Supreme Court.
In July, the full appeals court voted 7-2 to turn down requests by Silagy`s lawyers for a rehearing.
Silagy, of Danville, was convicted of beating and stomping his girlfriend and her roommate to death in 1980.
The U.S. Supreme Court won`t consider his appeal until later this year at the earliest, and some have suggested that Walker`s execution be postponed until after a decision by the high court.
But many lawyers and law professors involved in death-penalty cases believe the high court eventually will uphold the statute.
”There`s a logic in saying, `If the Illinois statute is going to be declared unconstitutional, it doesn`t make sense to execute someone.` But it`s not at all certain that the U.S. Supreme Court is going to consider Silagy,” Raphael said.
”I think if the U.S. Supreme Court had considered our statute 10 years ago, they would have found it unconstitutional. Since then there have been numerous changes in personnel on the court, and the justices have upheld other statutes that were attacked on similar grounds.”
Terence Madsen, chief of criminal appeals for the Illinois attorney general`s office, sees more executions in Illinois in the next few years, not because Walker may be the first, but because Silagy`s appeals are nearly exhausted.
”The federal courts are beginning to affirm sentences,” Madsen said.
”As they begin to affirm sentences, and the constitutionality of the statute is settled, we`ll start to see more executions.”
Who`s next if Walker dies Wednesday?
”Silagy would be the most likely in line and could be executed as early as next summer if his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, which we expect him to file in October, is denied,” Madsen said.
”As a matter of course, then he would be next in line and would have completed his process, although he does not want to be executed.”
