U. S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois recently announced at a breakfast honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., that he has changed his life-long opinion on the death penalty and now favors its abolition. Sen. Durbin, who is the second-ranking member of the U.S. Senate as the assistant majority leader, said that his reflections over many years brought about an evolution in his thinking about capital punishment, particularly with respect to its unfairness and the risk of executing the innocent. He noted, “There are many people who commit heinous crimes, and I’d be the first to stand up with emotion and say they should lose their lives. But when I look at the unfairness of it, the fact that the poor and people of color are most often the victims when it comes to the death penalty, and how many cases we’ve gotten wrong now that we have DNA evidence to back us up, I mean, it just tells me life imprisonment is penalty enough.” In early January, the Illinois General Assembly presented Governor Pat Quinn with a bill to end the death penalty in Illinois.

(B. Schoenburg, “Durbin changes stance on death penalty,” State Journal-Register, January 17, 2011). Read more New Voices on the death penalty. See Innocence and Race.

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