In a lengthy editorial June 10, the Tribune advocated replacing Illinois’ fatally flawed death penalty system with the federal system. A better solution is to replace the death penalty with life without possibility of parole. It is worth noting that in Illinois life without possibility of parole means just that, life. No one in Illinois has ever had a life without parole commuted, and there is no reason to expect a governor would do so in the future. Only the governor has the authority to commute a sentence.
There can be little question that the federal system is superior to Illinois’, but practically any system would be better than ours. During the past several years, Tribune reporters led by Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong have painstakingly chronicled a system that is too flawed to be fixed and needs to be replaced. The issue is not whether to replace the current system. The question is, replace it with what?
A review of issues ignored or glossed over by the Tribune editorial writers is helpful in making this judgment.
– What happens to the approximately 167 men and women currently on Death Row sentenced to death under the current flawed system? Would we kill them or grant them new trials under the new system?
– The federal system would not have protected Tony Porter, who came within 48 hours of being killed because of mistaken identity. There is no way to legislate against human error.
– The federal system would not protect against prosecutorial conduct such as occurred with the wrongful conviction of the Ford Heights Four and cost taxpayers of Cook County $36 million to settle a lawsuit.
– What would be the cost of implementing a federal system in Illinois? Illinois taxpayers have already paid millions to sentence 300 men and women to death in Illinois since l976 over and above what it would cost to sentence the same people to life without possibility of parole.
– The impact of race in the federal system is in some dispute. But there is little question of the impact of race in Illinois, where we have the largest percent of people of color on Death Row among the 50 states (67 percent compared with a national average of 48 percent). Obviously the federal system covers 50 states and one wonders if implementing it in our state would eliminate the impact of race, which is so deeply embedded in our system.
– The Tribune editorial writers failed to note a nationwide poll taken in March by Peter D. Hart Research Associates Inc. that showed that 60 percent of respondents favor the death penalty, but when given the alternative of life without parole, the number favoring death dropped to 38 percent, with 48 percent favoring the alternative.
– The death penalty denies the opportunity for change and redemption.
– The Tribune writers correctly note that about 1 percent of convicted murderers receive the death penalty. The Tribune concludes, therefore, that we need a federal system in Illinois for this 1 percent.
Rather than trying to fix a fatally flawed, largely symbolic system that makes all of us killers (state executions are listed as homicides and are conducted in our names), we should realize we need to replace the death penalty with life without parole for the simple reason of what it does to us. It makes all of us killers. We do not need to keep the death penalty as an expression of societal vengeance. This can only be true if we place our baser instincts above the more noble attributes of justice and mercy.
