NEWS BRIEF — Illinois Marks 10^th Anniversary of Death Penalty Abolition

It has now been ten years since Governor Pat Quinn signed into law a bill end­ing the death penal­ty in Illinois. The abo­li­tion bill, signed on March 9, 2011, was the cul­mi­na­tion of eleven years of debate after Governor George Ryan imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2000 and then issued four par­dons and 167 com­mu­ta­tions, clear­ing the state’s death row in 2003.

The Illinois mora­to­ri­um, imposed fol­low­ing a year in which U.S. exe­cu­tions peaked at 98, was a cat­a­lyst for rethink­ing the death penal­ty across the coun­try. At that time, 38 states autho­rized cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. One year after Ryan’s mass com­mu­ta­tion, the New York Court of Appeals declared its death-penal­ty statute uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The court sub­se­quent­ly applied that deci­sion to the rest of the pris­on­ers on the state’s death row in 2007. The New York leg­is­la­ture then opt­ed not to cor­rect the con­sti­tu­tion­al error, effec­tive­ly abol­ish­ing the state’s death penal­ty. Legislatures in New Jersey (2007) and New Mexico (2009) also repealed their cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws in the decade of the 2000s. 

Illinois became the first of five leg­is­la­tures to repeal their death penal­ties in the 2010s, fol­lowed by Connecticut (2012), Maryland (2013), Nebraska (2015, halt­ed by ref­er­en­dum), and New Hampshire (2018, vetoed; and 2019, veto over­rid­den). State courts also declared cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in Delaware (2016) and Washington (2018). In 2020, Colorado became the sixth state in a decade to abol­ish the death penal­ty. The Virginia leg­is­la­ture vot­ed in February to repeal its death penal­ty, and will become the first Southern state to end cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment once Governor Northam signs the abolition bill.