Jeff Smith of Evanston (Voice, June 28) is puzzled that an Illinois jury found Levern Ward guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of three murders and yet refused to impose the death penalty. Jurors said that they withheld the death penalty because they were not entirely certain of Ward’s guilt. Unable to reconcile the jury’s findings, Smith asks, “Am I missing something?”
Our system of capital punishment has been regularly failing to meet the basic requirements of justice. Nine times in recent years, Illinois juries have sentenced men to death only to find out, years later, that their guilty verdicts and death sentences had been grievous mistakes. All nine men were innocent of the crimes for which they had been condemned to death.
Given this history of near-fatal mistakes, it is not surprising that a well-reasoning Illinois jury would choose to forgo the death penalty if they had some doubts of guilt short of a reasonable doubt.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office recognizes that capital punishment should not be imposed unless guilt can be established to a moral certainty. In the case of Ronald Jones, one of my clients, prosecutors were able to obtain a guilty verdict and death sentence in 1989 by arguing that semen found on a rape/murder victim had come from the perpetrator who the prosecutors claimed was Ronald Jones. When DNA testing performed last year conclusively proved that the semen came from someone other than Ronald Jones, the state’s attorney conceded that Mr. Jones was entitled to a new trial. In so doing, the prosecutors announced that the death penalty would not be sought at a new trial because there was no longer a moral certainty of guilt.
Although it appears to many that the DNA testing established Jones’ innocence, he remains in the county jail today awaiting the Cook County state’s attorney’s decision as to whether to try for another guilty verdict. But at least he no longer faces the prospect of being executed for a crime he did not commit.
Rather than castigating the well-reasoned and temperate decision of the Ward jury, Mr. Smith and all Illinois citizens ought to become aware of and do something about our arbitrary and capricious capital punishment system.
