Eleven former Illinois Death Row inmates are now exonerated. In 3 percent of the cases since 1977 when Illinois courts imposed death sentences, the defendant was innocent. Anthony Porter, recently cleared of murder charges, came within 49 hours of being executed for a crime he didn’t commit–saved by a procedural glitch. These are sobering facts.
In recent weeks, the number of voices calling for a moratorium on executions has grown. Even longtime supporters of capital punishment like Mayor Richard M. Daley endorsed the moratorium concept in the days following Porter’s release. By an overwhelming margin, the Judiciary Committee on Criminal Law of the Illinois House of Representatives recently passed a death-penalty moratorium bill, sending the measure to the House floor for debate. Just this past week, several hundred Illinois lawyers sent a letter to Gov. George Ryan urging him to appoint a special commission to study the capital punishment process and to halt executions while the commission is at work. Surely this is a measured and appropriate response to an undeniably grave problem.
But good ideas often sell better in the abstract than in the messy detail of particular cases. On Wednesday, the State of Illinois plans to execute Andrew Kokoraleis, convicted of two grisly murders and mutilations and suspected in a string of similar killings. For the murder of Lorraine Borowski, Kokoraleis was sentenced to death. The other murder conviction produced a sentence of natural life in prison.
If you believe that capital punishment is a necessary means for society to express its collective moral outrage at those who have committed unpardonably despicable acts, then Andrew Kokoraleis is a walking advertisement for your point of view. The crimes he stands convicted of don’t even bear describing. Why not kill him then?
Here’s one reason. In an appeal filed last week in the Illinois Supreme Court and in a clemency petition submitted to Gov. Ryan, Kokoraleis’ lawyers contend there is reason to believe their client may be innocent of the murder of Lorraine Borowski (though they acknowledge he is guilty of other killings). They point out that the only evidence connecting Kokoraleis to the murder of Borowski is a confession he had already recanted at the time of trial. They say the confession (only about 150 words long) doesn’t match the facts of the crime. And they claim to have polygraph results showing Kokoraleis is telling the truth when he says he was beaten by police before he gave the confession. Kokoraleis asked the Supreme Court and the governor for a hearing on his claim of innocence. The Supreme Court has already turned him down.
Is this nothing more than a last-minute gambit to stall the inevitable?
Perhaps. But surely we have no business forgetting the lessons of our recent history. Anthony Porter’s claim of innocence was summarily brushed aside by the Illinois Supreme Court in an opinion that preceded the dramatic revelation of new evidence of his innocence. And there are echoes in Kokoraleis’claims of other Death Row exonerations. Gary Gauger, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez–all now exonerated–were convicted based in part on supposed confessions their lawyers had contended all along were unworthy of belief.
We can’t ignore the possibility that Andrew Kokoraleis just may be innocent of the one crime for which he was sentenced to death. Not if Anthony Porter’s narrow escape from lethal injection has taught us anything. And the people of Illinois can’t go ahead and kill Kokoraleis just because he’s surely done enough evil in his life to deserve the worst of ends. Not if we believe in a system of ordered justice in which the punishment imposed must be for the crime of conviction.
It would be a lot simpler if Andrew Kokoraleis merited a shred of sympathy. He doesn’t. He just happens to be the next in line for lethal injection. At this particular moment in the history of our state, as we plan the execution of this new poster child for the death penalty, we would do well to remember that we stand at a moral and political crossroads. If the politicians, the lawyers and the civic leaders were serious when they said just last month that our capital punishment system is flawed, error prone, in obvious need of examination before it can be trusted to work fairly, then the time to begin the study and the moratorium is now. Andrew Kokoraleis should be given his hearing. Let us heed the sober lessons of our recent history. Not for Andrew Kokoraleis’ sake. For ourselves, and for the integrity of the system of justice on which we all depend.
