In a recent arti­cle in the Peoria Journal Star, Jennifer Bishop Jenkins and Kathleen Bishop Becker, both of whom had fam­i­ly mem­bers mur­dered, called on Illinois​’s state leg­is­la­ture to end the death penal­ty as a bet­ter way of help­ing vic­tims. Becker and Jenkins wrote, ​“When our fam­i­ly mem­bers were mur­dered, issues like crime pre­ven­tion, vic­tims’ rights, and the death penal­ty stopped being mere­ly hypo­thet­i­cal… it’s because we pri­or­i­tize vic­tims and pub­lic safe­ty that we sup­port replac­ing the Illinois death penal­ty with life with­out parole sen­tences for con­vict­ed mur­der­ers.” Jenkins was a mem­ber of the Illinois Capital Punishment Reform Study Commission, which met over 80 times and held pub­lic hear­ings around the state. After a decade of study, Jenkins con­clud­ed that the sys­tem can­not be fixed. She and Becker wrote, ​“We note that Illinois has tried hard­er than any oth­er state to make it work. But it can’t work, and enough is enough… We still find inno­cent men on Death Row in our state. We still spend mil­lions of dol­lars to keep this bro­ken sys­tem limp­ing along.” They also addressed how the death penal­ty harms vic­tims’ fam­i­lies: ​“In cap­i­tal cas­es, fam­i­ly mem­bers are forced to endure years of tri­als and appeals that last at least twice as long as in non-cap­i­tal cas­es, not to men­tion a long string of pos­si­ble rever­sals because the sys­tem did­n’t get it right. The offend­er becomes a house­hold name and the vic­tim is for­got­ten. We are fre­quent­ly denied legal final­i­ty. The state ends up spend­ing mil­lions, which are then not avail­able to help vic­tims or fam­i­ly mem­bers.” In December, the Illinois House Judiciary Committee passed SB 3539, a bill to repeal the death penal­ty and use the mon­ey saved for ser­vices to vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. The bill is like­ly to return for a vote in ear­ly January 2011. The authors con­clud­ed, ​“We assure you, fam­i­lies like ours need these ser­vices much more des­per­ate­ly than we could ever need the death penalty.”

(J. Jenkins and K. Becker, ​“In the Spotlight: Facts, Careful Study Show Death Penalty System is Still Flawed,” Peoria Journal Star, January 1, 2011). See Victims.

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