The opponents of the DP need not worry about enacting LWOP or getting the right judges on the Supreme Court. They need only focus on getting the right super-legislator (governor) elected. I liked Clinton's pardons a lot better than wimp Ryan's surgery of the Illinois penal law. If he really thought it was a matter of principle and justice he would have acted at a time when he could be impeached and really go into the history books.

It's kinda like declaring the teams that came in second in the Super Bowls the real winners.

I think the most offensive thing about the whole process was the way Gov. Ryan put the victims' families through the review process when it seems that his decision was a foregone conclusion from the outset. Did he really learn anything new about the administration of the death penalty in Illinois through the reviews that were done? If the review were truly about independently assessing the merits of the death penalty on each case, the result would not be a clean sweep of death row.

I hear Gov. Ryan's looking at possible indictment himself. Maybe he thinks this will make doing his time easier since he's sure to be more popular with his new neighbors in the pen?

In its January 23 opinion affirming Gov. Ryan's actions, the Illinois Supreme Court seemed to concede its disagreement with the decision: "clemency is the historic remedy employed to prevent a miscarriage of justice where the judicial process has been exhausted. We believe that this is the purpose for which the framers gave the Governor this power in the Illinois Constitution. The grant of this essentially unreviewable power carries with it the responsibility to exercise it in the manner intended. Our hope is that Governors will use the clemency power in its intended manner-to prevent miscarriages of justice in individual cases."

Yet, the court found that in re-drafting the Illinois Constitution in 1970, everyone intended the will of the Governor to be absolute, since it gave him the power to act "on such terms as he thinks proper" (i.e., without regard to the prior decisions made as to the proper punishment). Absolute power, of course, corrupts absolutely. Makes me glad the Fergusons helped us get our system reformed years ago.

Anyone care to guess how this is going to be resolved? I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

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www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-deathpenalty_13feb13,0,3111442.story

Governor urged to resume executions

Birkett, legislators say system has been reformed

By Art Barnum
Tribune reporter

February 13, 2008

DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett joined a Republican lawmaker Tuesday in urging Gov. Rod Blagojevich to resume executions, saying Illinois' death-penalty system has been reformed.

"We encourage the governor to follow the law," said Birkett, president of the Illinois State's Attorneys Association. "It has been eight years since the moratorium was imposed."

To that end, state Rep. Dennis Reboletti (R-Elmhurst) said he has introduced a House resolution asking Blagojevich to resume executions.

"The death penalty is the law of the state and it should be enforced," said Reboletti, who pointed out that Illinois juries have sent 12 people to Death Row in recent years. "We shouldn't ask jurors to impose the death penalty and not have the courage to carry it out."

But Blagojevich, who first ran for governor in 2002 as a death penalty proponent, plans to stand pat. He'll "keep the moratorium on death penalties in place until it's clear beyond a doubt that the reforms put in place ... are adequate and working and there's no chance that an innocent person will wrongfully be put to death," spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said Tuesday.

The lobbying effort comes after then-Gov. George Ryan issued a death-penalty moratorium in 2000, and in 2003 commuted the death sentences of about 160 prisoners, citing a flawed system in which more than a dozen people were improperly put on Death Row.

Illinois Supreme Court rules approved since 2003 for death-penalty cases include mandatory use of videotape confessions in murder cases, establishment of a fund to help pay for legal defense in death penalty cases, stronger restrictions on the use of "jailhouse snitches," broader use of DNA analysis and strict standards for attorneys prosecuting and defending the cases.

Death penalty opponents say that other important possible reforms -- such as establishing an independent crime lab and narrowing the number of factors that could allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty -- haven't been implemented.

A state committee reviewing the impact of death penalty reforms is due to report its findings this year.

"There have been committees, commissions and new Illinois Supreme Court rules that have made proper reforms in our state's death penalty system," Reboletti said. "The death penalty is there, and the moratorium is fiction. We are still asking the governor to review every case, but not continue with a blanket moratorium."

Birkett strongly opposed Ryan's action and was behind failed legal action to overturn it. Birkett acknowledged that even if Blagojevich allowed executions to resume, the number of legal appeals available means "no one on Death Row is close [to being executed], maybe for at least 10 years."

Birkett said that prosecutors want to eliminate mistakes, and that the current number of 21 aggravating factors that could lead to a death penalty should be reduced to eight or nine.

The debate continues against the backdrop of a DuPage County trial where prosecutors are seeking the conviction and death penalty for Eric Hanson, a Naperville man accused of killing four family members.

In addition, Birkett is personally prosecuting and seeking the death penalty for Brian Dugan in the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, crimes for which two Aurora men were convicted, sentenced to death and eventually freed.

"With the recent slaughter of five innocent women in Tinley Park and similar cases, we, as a society, must ask ourselves, 'Does a person who commits such a horrible and atrocious crime deserve to live, even in a penitentiary?'" Birkett said. "The death penalty is a serious moral issue, but it shouldn't be a political issue."

"keep the moratorium on death penalties in place until it's clear beyond a doubt that the reforms put in place ... are adequate and working and there's no chance that an innocent person will wrongfully be put to death,"

JAS

One more piece of evidence that the anti-death penalty game plan is to "reform" the death penalty to death. Years ago, as documented in law review articles, certain anti-death penalty advocates recognized that an honest debate always ended with the public and a voting majority supporting the death penalty.

So, the advocates developed a new strategy: say you are for the death penalty and just want to work to improve it. Substitute the word "abolition" with the word "moratorium." The media loved this new approach, as it fit with their view of the death penalty.

And so it goes.

if moratoriums are governed by whether there is any chance that an innocent person will be executed, then why call it anything other than abolition?