If Andrew Kokoraleis is put to death as scheduled just after midnight Wednesday, it will be amid grave and persistent doubts about the legitimacy of Illinois’ administration of the death penalty–doubts on the part of state legal officials, legal organizations and the public at large.
Those doubts have been engendered by one overwhelming fact: Since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, 11 men have been executed and 11 others who were condemned have been set free after additional evidence exonerated them. That is the second highest number of wrongful convictions in capital cases in the country, after Florida.
Executing someone is society’s most awesome sanction, and an irreversible one. With good reason, Illinoisans have begun to wonder whether this state’s judicial system provides the safeguards necessary to ensure, to the greatest extent humanly possible, that we do not put to death a person about whose guilt there is any substantial doubt.
Kokoraleis unquestionably is a bad, violent person. He was sentenced to die for the grisly kidnapping, mutilation and murder of 21-year-old Lorraine Borowski in 1982. He received a life sentence for another murder and, along with three other men, was implicated in a series of killings in DuPage County.
His lawyers now say that the confession that was the basis for his conviction in the Borowski case was coerced by the police and that prosecutors withheld potentially exculpatory evidence. Convenient as such claims may be, in light of Illinois’ record of retracted confessions, sub-par legal representation, questionable handling of evidence and prosecutorial misconduct in other capital cases, they cannot simply be dismissed out of hand.
We continue to believe that Illinois ought to have a death penalty, to be employed against those who commit particularly heinous capital crimes. Certainly the murder of Lorraine Borowski fits that description and Andrew Kokoraleis deserves that sanction–if in fact he committed the crime. Unfortunately, our grievously flawed system makes doubt all too possible.
Kokoraleis has been on Death Row for the better part of two decades. It would be a small price to pay to stay his and all other executions until those who have come forward with ideas for reforming the system–Gov. George Ryan, Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, Cook County State’s Atty. Dick Devine, the Illinois Bar Association, and others–can craft a new one that will engender confidence and merit the support of all. Given the stakes involved in this ultimate sanction, time is one thing we have plenty of.
