The Illinois Capital Reform Study Committee, cre­at­ed by the state leg­is­la­ture in 2003 and head­ed by Thomas P. Sullivan, a for­mer U.S. Attorney, recent­ly issued its sixth and final report on the Illinois death penal­ty. The report found that tax­pay­ers are spend­ing tens of mil­lions of dol­lars on the pros­e­cu­tion of a large num­ber of death-penal­ty cas­es, even though rel­a­tive­ly few result in actu­al death sen­tences. Since 2003, 18 peo­ple have been sen­tenced to death, even though 500 defen­dants had cap­i­tal charges brought against them. The report found that pros­e­cu­tors seek the penal­ty as a bar­gain­ing ploy in pur­suit of a less­er guilty plea and sen­tence. Leigh B. Bienen, a senior lec­tur­er at Northwestern University School of Law and a mem­ber of the study com­mit­tee designed to help fix the state’s sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment said, ​“It doesn’t look too fixed to me.” Since 2000, she learned, $100 mil­lion in tax­pay­er mon­ey has been spent via the Capital Litigation Trust Fund. The mon­ey was meant to ensure defense coun­sel in cap­i­tal cas­es, espe­cial­ly in places where pub­lic defend­er offices were inad­e­quate for the task. But the fund is also used by pros­e­cu­tors to pay for their con­sid­er­able non­salary expens­es, includ­ing those for investigators,

Counties get a vir­tu­al­ly bank­rupt state to pick up the tab and ​“to main­tain a very expen­sive and dys­func­tion­al sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment,” Mrs. Bienen wrote. Scott Turow, the lawyer and author, who is a for­mer mem­ber of the state’s Commission on Capital Punishment, said, ​“I used to think that cost argu­ments were not worth­while, because you can’t get to them with­out resolv­ing the issue of whether the death penal­ty is actu­al­ly deter­rence. But assum­ing it’s not a deter­rent, ­ which the data sug­gest, ­ it’s worth ask­ing how much we’re will­ing to pay just to appease a sense of public vengeance.”

In addi­tion, $64 mil­lion has been spent on civ­il dam­age awards to men whose death row con­vic­tions were reversed. Illinois has had a mora­to­ri­um on all exe­cu­tions since 2000. The leg­is­la­ture may con­sid­er a bill to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in its current session.

(J. Warren, ​“Expose Hits Hard at Death Penalty System,” Chicago News Cooperative, report­ed in the N.Y. Times, November 13, 2010). See Costs and Studies.

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