Illinois proposes reinstating death penalty for mass murder, police killings

By Jon Herskovitz

 

FILE PHOTO: Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner speaks to the news media outside of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, U.S., February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo

 

(Reuters) - Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner said on Monday he is seeking to reinstate the death penalty for mass murder and killing a police officer, a move that comes when capital punishment nationwide is at lows not seen for about a quarter century.

 

Rauner, a Republican, said it would bolster public safety, adding defendants in death penalty cases would be tried using a higher standard for determining guilt.

 

“We are intent on avoiding wrongful convictions and the injustice of inconsistency,” he said.

 

Faulty prosecutions and a heavily publicized exoneration led then Republican Illinois Governor George Ryan in 2000 to impose a 10-year execution moratorium and in 2011 the state abolished capital punishment.

 

Even if lawmakers agree, it would be difficult for Illinois to resume executions due to a shortage of lethal injection drugs caused by a sales boycott by major pharmaceutical companies over ethical concerns.

 

Republican Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker this month told reporters he was in talks with lawmakers about reinstating the death penalty for those who kill law enforcement officers in the state.

 

The administration of Republican President Donald Trump has instructed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in drug-related cases whenever it is "appropriate," to counter America's epidemic of opioid abuse.

 

After the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, executions hit a peak of 98 in 1999. They have been trending down for the past decade and hit 23 last year, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors U.S. capital punishment.

 

Even though 31 states still have the death penalty, only about a third have conducted executions in the past few years for reasons including the drug sales ban and legal battles that have halted executions.

 

Since 1973, about 160 people sent to death row nationwide have been exonerated, the death penalty centre said.

 

Some conservatives have pushed to halt the death penalty, arguing it is a costly and inefficient bureaucratic program that runs counter to their core values of limited government.

 

"Illinois studied its death penalty for over a decade and rightfully determined that it was broken beyond repair. There is simply no good reason to bring it back, and doing so would run counter to conservative principles of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and the valuing life," said Heather Beaudoin, national coordinator of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty.

 

(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz in Austin, Texas; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-05-15

Add rape to the list.

 

Bring it back  yesterday

like

No point at all. It doesn't deter and costs much more money than putting them away for life.

No comment on the political choice......but do the places already using the death penalty, have a 0 ratio of crime, as the death penalty could be considered as a high deterrent ? Obviously,  the answer is No !...

 

Consequently, the death penalty seems more like a lex talionis - tit-for-tat response, rather then to act as a deterrent....and that's where something seems wrong as IMHO the primary role of law is to deterrence [or punishment]....but not revenge !

 

A substitute could be in life jail sentence, in total isolation from other inmates,  with no parole.

The trick is to get it done quickly. Within 48 hours of the sentence being passed. If guilty beyond any doubt, and proven with DNA, etc, let him die quickly. In California it takes 20 years or more, and the average person on death row costs the state $60 million. That is just stupid. Once a man crosses certain lines, he has self revoked his right to consume oxygen. Waste them quickly. 

A punishment that will be reserved for the poor.