Illinois law­mak­ers recent­ly approved sweep­ing death penal­ty reforms and have sent the leg­isla­tive pack­age to Governor Rod Blagojevich for sig­na­ture into law. The reforms are expect­ed to trans­form the inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tion of every death-eli­gi­ble crime in Illinois. Based on rec­om­men­da­tions made by the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, the bill would change police pro­ce­dures regard­ing dis­clo­sure of evi­dence, set up a sys­tem to get rid of police offi­cers who lie, lim­it the num­ber of crimes that could result in a death sen­tence, improve police line-up pro­ce­dures, and cre­ate pre­tri­al hear­ings to help deter­mine the cred­i­bil­i­ty of jail­house infor­mants. In addi­tion, the bill cre­ates a pre­sump­tion that any­one with an IQ less than 75 is men­tal­ly retard­ed and is not eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, and it estab­lish­es a ​“fun­da­men­tal jus­tice” pro­vi­sion that empow­ers the Illinois Supreme Court to over­turn a death sen­tence if jus­tices thought it was not called for in a par­tic­u­lar case. Although Blagojevich is expect­ed to sign the leg­is­la­tion, he not­ed that he feels it does not go far enough to pro­tect against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent per­son. Blagojevich con­tin­ues to sup­port the mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in Illinois. 

(Chicago Tribune, May 30, 2003). See Innocence and Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment.

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