ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE VOTES TO REPEAL THE DEATH PENALTY

On January 11, the Illinois Senate, by a vote of 32 – 25, joined the House in vot­ing to repeal the state’s death penal­ty and re-allo­cate funds in the Capital Litigation Trust Fund to a fund for mur­der vic­tims’ ser­vices and law enforce­ment. If signed into law, Illinois would become the 16^th state to stop cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and would mark the fewest states with the death penal­ty since 1978. Since 1976, Illinois has car­ried out 12 exe­cu­tions. In the same peri­od, 20 inmates have been exon­er­at­ed from the state’s death row, the sec­ond high­est num­ber in the United States. The state has not had an exe­cu­tion since 1999, and since then, use of the death penal­ty has declined sharply. In the 1990s, the state aver­aged over 10 death sen­tences a year. In 2009 and 2010, the state imposed only one death sen­tence each year. The bill must be signed by Governor Pat Quinn in order to become law.

Many mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies were among the strongest sup­port­ers of the repeal bill. In a let­ter to the Illinois General Assembly, a group of fam­i­ly mem­bers who had lost a loved one to mur­der in Illinois wrote that, ​“dol­lars saved [by abol­ish­ing the death penal­ty] could be put toward coun­sel­ing for vic­tims of crime or oth­er ser­vices we des­per­ate­ly need as we attempt to get on with our lives.” The high cost of the death penal­ty was a con­cern high­light­ed in the leg­isla­tive debate. Since 2003, the state has spent over $100 mil­lion on the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, a sum that rep­re­sents only a por­tion of the costs asso­ci­at­ed with imple­ment­ing the death penal­ty in Illinois. The Illinois vote is in line with a broad­er trend away from the death penal­ty around the coun­try. New Mexico and New Jersey recent­ly vot­ed to abol­ish the death penal­ty in 2009 and 2007, respec­tive­ly. New York has also aban­doned the death penal­ty. Other state leg­is­la­tures will like­ly be con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar bills in the near future.

(DPIC, from news sources, post­ed Jan. 11, 2011). Read DPIC’s Press Release. See Recent Legislative Activity.