Is the death penalty dead? No, not by a long shot.
The terrific reporting on flaws in the capital punishment system has drained away some of the public’s approval of executions. But that means the support has slipped from nearly unanimous to merely overwhelming. A Gallup poll earlier this year found 66 percent of the nation wants to keep the death penalty. That’s a consensus by any measure.
Support for capital punishment, though, doesn’t translate into support for executing innocent people. In Illinois, Gov. George Ryan’s decision to impose a moratorium on executions has been a very popular move. People are saying: We want the death penalty, but fix it.
That message doesn’t seem to be getting through to the people who need to hear it, the prosecutors who seek the death penalty and the politicians who will be in charge of the repairs.
Look at the reaction when state Rep. Jim Durkin, (R-Westchester), a former prosecutor, floated some ideas from the House Special Committee on Prosecutorial Misconduct, which he headed.
You’d think Durkin’s idea of reform was to throw open the doors of the Joliet Correctional Center.
“I can’t believe anybody would want to put their name on this,” screamed Joe Birkett, the DuPage County state’s attorney. “Jim Durkin should know better than that.”
Richard Devine, the Cook County state’s attorney, was only a little more diplomatic. Durkin, he said, has done “a great disservice to the overwhelming number of prosecutors who every day work with great integrity and professionalism.”
Now, Durkin must have been a pretty decent prosecutor in his day. In four years in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, he handled his share of murderers, rapists and drug-runners. He handled 10 jury trials and won ’em all.
And he’s been a law-and-order legislator. He has handled more than 30 anti-crime bills, several at the behest of Devine and Birkett.
All Durkin is talking about now is writing into law some assurances that no one gets railroaded onto Death Row.
If the prosecution intentionally withholds evidence, a defendant would get a new trial. The testimony of jailhouse informants would get greater scrutiny. Defense attorneys could take pretrial statements from witnesses so the defense wouldn’t get ambushed at trial.
Durkin’s committee is only the first word on judicial reform. A committee created by Gov. Ryan, and headed by former federal judge Frank McGarr, former U.S. Atty. Thomas Sullivan, and former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, will report some ideas in about six months. The Illinois Supreme Court has tapped Thomas Fitzgerald, chief of the Cook County Criminal Court, to lead a special committee on capital punishment.
Which means there are a lot of worthy people saying there is a problem here.
But judging from the early attempts to tar and feather Jim Durkin, the likely response to all these people seems very obvious. The prosecutors are going to whine and moan that they are misunderstood, and they’re going to lean on conservatives in the legislature to stall any significant death-penalty reforms.
It may not have dawned on them that George Ryan has them over a barrel.
If they follow their instincts to stop any changes in the judicial system, they will guarantee that no one is executed in Illinois. If they want the death penalty in this state, they will have to fix the death penalty in this state. At least as long as Ryan is governor, ready to enforce his moratorium. And Ryan shows no sign of blinking.
So the game plan may be to wait out Ryan, assuming, as many people do, that he won’t seek re-election in 2002.
But that may not be a wise move for Republicans. If George Ryan retires after one term, the Republicans’ best candidate to replace him stands to be Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan.
If the moratorium is still in place, the questions about the death penalty will be a major issue in the 2002 campaign. And that means Rolando Cruz will be a major issue in that campaign.
Jim Ryan has supported the governor’s execution moratorium, and he has encouraged death-penalty reforms. But he was also the prosecutor who put Rolando Cruz on Death Row.
As DuPage County state’s attorney, he prosecuted Cruz for the murder of Jeanine Nicarico, a crime for which Cruz was later cleared. Cruz spent years on Death Row before he was acquitted and freed. It’s not an issue that Ryan will want to dwell upon in a campaign for governor. But it’s one he won’t be able to avoid if the fate of capital punishment is still in the air.
If the Republicans want to hang onto the governor’s office in 2002 they need to put this issue to bed, and soon.
And if they want a death penalty, they have to fix it.
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E-mail: bdold@tribune.com
