Chicago Tribune Changes Position and Calls for Abolition of Death Penalty

After decades of main­tain­ing a posi­tion that the gov­ern­ment should have the legal right to impose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, the Chicago Tribune is now call­ing for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty. Noting con­cerns about inno­cence, the arbi­trary nature of the pun­ish­ment, and the pub­lic’s shift away from the death penal­ty, the Tribune announced on March 25 that, ​“The evi­dence of mis­takes, the evi­dence of arbi­trary deci­sions, the sober­ing knowl­edge that gov­ern­ment can’t pro­vide cer­tain­ty that the inno­cent will not be put to death – all that prompts this call for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. It is time to stop killing in the peo­ple’s name.”

The entire edi­to­r­i­al fol­lows:

One of the core tenets of this news­pa­per since its found­ing has been that the extra­or­di­nary pow­er of gov­ern­ment must be wield­ed care­ful­ly and spar­ing­ly – par­tic­u­lar­ly when that pow­er weighs on the life and lib­er­ty of cit­i­zens.

It has, as well, long been the posi­tion of this edi­to­r­i­al page that the gov­ern­ment should have the legal right to impose cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment – the death penal­ty.

An edi­to­r­i­al in 1869 stat­ed: ​“Imprisonment as a penal­ty for cap­i­tal crime has lost all its pre­ven­ta­tive val­ue.” A Tribune edi­to­r­i­al in 1952 called the death penal­ty ​“the most pow­er­ful deter­rent to oth­er crim­i­nals.” In 1976 this page said, ​“The dan­ger of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son is often cit­ed, but we think unjus­ti­fi­ably.”

That last sen­tence sounds chill­ing today, in light of evi­dence in recent years of scores of cas­es in which gov­ern­ment has wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed defen­dants and sen­tenced them to death. The evi­dence of recent years argues that it is nec­es­sary to curb the gov­ern­men­t’s pow­er. It is time to abol­ish the death penal­ty.

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We have learned much, par­tic­u­lar­ly with advances in DNA tech­nol­o­gy, about the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem’s capac­i­ty to make ter­ri­ble mis­takes. These rev­e­la­tions – many stem­ming from inves­ti­ga­tions by this news­pa­per – shake the foun­da­tion of sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

Who gets a sen­tence of life and who gets death is often a mat­ter of ran­dom luck, of pol­i­tics, of geog­ra­phy, even a mat­ter of racism. Mistakes can occur at every lev­el of the process.

Consider:

 — Timothy McVeigh was exe­cut­ed in 2001 for the deaths of 168 peo­ple in the Murrah Federal Building bomb­ing in Oklahoma City. Zacarias Moussaoui was sen­tenced to life in prison for his role in the Sept. 11 ter­ror­ist attacks, which took more than 3,000 lives.

 — The Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, con­fessed to mur­der­ing at least 48 women – he may have been the most pro­lif­ic ser­i­al killer in U.S. his­to­ry. But he made a plea agree­ment with pros­e­cu­tors in Washington state that spared his life. Two years ear­li­er, jurors in Washington sen­tenced a man to death for the mur­der of one woman dur­ing a rob­bery.

 — There is ample evi­dence that killers are far more like­ly to land on Death Row if their vic­tims are white than if they are black or Hispanic.

 — You are 10 times more like­ly to get a death sen­tence in DuPage County than if you cross the bor­der into Cook County.

The sys­tem is arbi­trary, and the sys­tem just plain gets it wrong. In the three decades since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in the U.S., more than 120 peo­ple have been released from Death Row after evi­dence was pre­sent­ed that under­mined the case against them. In that time Illinois has exe­cut­ed 12 peo­ple – and freed 18 from Death Row.

This news­pa­per has done ground­break­ing report­ing on cas­es that sug­gest inno­cent peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed.

Cameron Todd Willingham was put to death in Texas in 1994 for the arson mur­ders of his three daugh­ters. Willingham claimed he was inno­cent, and now sev­er­al arson experts believe the case against him was built on sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid evi­dence. The fire that killed Willingham’s chil­dren may have been an acci­dent.

Carlos De Luna was exe­cut­ed in Texas in 1989 for the mur­der of a gas sta­tion clerk, though no foren­sic evi­dence linked him to the crime. Now evi­dence points to anoth­er man, Carlos Hernandez, who bragged to rel­a­tives and friends that De Luna was con­vict­ed for a mur­der Hernandez com­mit­ted.

Even when the gov­ern­ment con­victs the right per­son, it can hor­ri­bly botch the pun­ish­ment. In December, it took Florida author­i­ties 34 min­utes to end the life of Angel Nieves Diaz because a poor­ly trained exe­cu­tion­er incor­rect­ly insert­ed a nee­dle into his arm. The blun­der prompt­ed then-Gov. Jeb Bush to halt exe­cu­tions until the state improved its lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures.

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Public sup­port for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has gen­er­al­ly been strong over the years. Yet there’s evi­dence that the think­ing of many peo­ple is chang­ing. In a May 2006 poll, two-thirds of Americans said they sup­port­ed cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. But there was a sig­nif­i­cant shift when they were asked what was the best penal­ty for mur­der. On that ques­tion, 47 per­cent chose the death penal­ty and 48 per­cent chose life in prison with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole.

The most com­pelling evi­dence of a shift in pub­lic sen­ti­ment is that the num­ber of death sen­tences hand­ed out by judges and juries has plunged. There were 315 death sen­tences in 1995, but just 128 in 2005 and 102 in 2006. The num­ber of exe­cu­tions has dropped near­ly in half in the last eight years.

Society’s stan­dards of jus­tice and pun­ish­ment con­tin­ue to evolve. In the ear­ly 1900s, states began to sub­sti­tute the elec­tric chair as a more humane method of exe­cu­tion than the gal­lows. In the 1980s, lethal injec­tion began to replace the elec­tric chair and fir­ing squads. Now lethal injec­tion is com­ing under more scruti­ny as evi­dence grows that it sub­jects the con­demned to a great deal of pain. Eleven states have halt­ed exe­cu­tions while they exam­ine their lethal injec­tion pro­ce­dures.

In the last five years, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute juve­niles and the men­tal­ly retard­ed.

New Jersey placed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2005, in part because of leg­is­la­tors’ con­cerns about irre­versible mis­takes. A spe­cial com­mis­sion in New Jersey has rec­om­mend­ed abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty and replac­ing it with life impris­on­ment with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The com­mis­sion cit­ed, among oth­er rea­sons, the high cost of pros­e­cut­ing and car­ry­ing out the sen­tence in a cap­i­tal case. That far exceeds the cost of try­ing a defen­dant and keep­ing him locked up for life.

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Illinois has been the focal point for the exam­i­na­tion of the fail­ings of the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Former Gov. George Ryan imposed a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2000, and Gov. Rod Blagojevich has sus­tained it. In the wake of rev­e­la­tions about how many peo­ple have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in Illinois, the state has made efforts to reform its crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

In 2001 the Illinois Supreme Court estab­lished a Capital Litigation Trial Bar, which set min­i­mum stan­dards for attor­neys rep­re­sent­ing cap­i­tal defen­dants and required judges to get more train­ing. The leg­is­la­ture passed a pack­age of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment fix­es, includ­ing an impor­tant mea­sure to require that police inter­ro­ga­tions of homi­cide sus­pects be record­ed.

This page pushed very hard for those reforms, and they have addressed some prob­lems, but not all. Flaws remain.

Little has been done to guard against sit­u­a­tions in which wit­ness­es to a mur­der mis­tak­en­ly iden­ti­fy an inno­cent per­son as the sus­pect, the sin­gle great­est source of wrong­ful con­vic­tions. No mech­a­nism exists in Illinois to review what went wrong in cas­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, or to ensure that the death penal­ty is even­ly applied across geo­graph­ic bound­aries. Efforts to address mis­takes or bad actors at foren­sic labs have gone nowhere. We don’t see the prospect that there are bet­ter fix­es for these gaps. Meanwhile, the list of crimes eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty has been expand­ed.

When it acknowl­edged wide­spread prob­lems in its sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, Illinois prompt­ed a nation­wide soul-search­ing. Illinois can now lead the coun­try by rec­og­niz­ing those errors will not be suf­fi­cient­ly addressed, that the state can­not have moral cer­tain­ty that new injus­tices won’t be heaped atop old ones.

Research on the deter­rent effect of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment has pro­duced con­flict­ing results over the years. But with the small num­ber of instances – less than one-half of one per­cent of all mur­der­ers are exe­cut­ed – it seems that if cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment ever did serve to stop vio­lence, it does not do so now.

Illinois already has the nec­es­sary alter­na­tive to death: life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. It is not a com­fort­able exis­tence. It can mean life in a Supermax prison, where inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7‑by-12-foot cells.

The evi­dence of mis­takes, the evi­dence of arbi­trary deci­sions, the sober­ing knowl­edge that gov­ern­ment can’t pro­vide cer­tain­ty that the inno­cent will not be put to death – all that prompts this call for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. It is time to stop killing in the peo­ple’s name.

(Chicago Tribune, March 25, 2007). See Editorials, Innocence, Arbitrariness, and DPIC’s 2006 Year End Report.