From [HERE]
The Illinois House and Senate voted nearly a month ago to abolish the death penalty. All that is needed is Gov. Pat Quinn's signature.
When the governor signs this bill into law he will free millions of dollars each year.
The death penalty costs taxpayers a lot. We have spent $54 million on the capital litigation fund alone in order to pay the cost of capital trials. In the 1978 Ford Heights case for wrongfully convicting the innocent (only one of many such cases), the public paid $36 million in settlement.
The families and friends of the victims will be freed from years of making court appearances as the death sentence is appealed. And, best of all, we all will be spared the horror of finding out that an innocent person has been executed while the guilty person remains free.
Twenty innocent men were wrongfully condemned to death in Illinois. Some because of mistaken identity, others because of prosecutorial misconduct, such as hiding evidence favorable to the defendant. Worse yet, some were wrongfully condemned to death by torture at the hands of a rogue police officer and his co-conspirators, who tortured African-Americans until they confessed to crimes they did not commit.
In the Markham courthouse where I sat as presiding judge, I was told that before I arrived, a judge who sentenced a defendant to death was given a "3-peat party" by Cook County state's attorneys, in honor of the judge sentencing his third defendant to death.
Let us now step into the light. Due to great lawyers and investigators, courageous judges and journalism students with intelligence and pluck, 20 men on death row, wrongfully convicted, have been set free.
Freedom also came due to vigilant reporters from the Chicago press who exposed wrongful convictions before the executions occurred.
Illinois has led the nation in death row transparency.
Since the moratorium, no one in Illinois has been executed. But as long as the death penalty is the law, it could occur again.
I was one judge who had the greatest privilege any judge could have. An absolutely innocent person with no prior record was sentenced to death on the words of just one witness. The witness had pleaded guilty to perjury. Prosecutors did not allow the jury to know that promises of getting her children back were made to her. Verneal Jimerson was sentenced to death in 1978. The real killers and rapists were not brought to justice until Northwestern University journalism students obtained their confessions.
To see an innocent man, shackled before me, to see his chains removed, to see the tears in his eyes that matched the tears in my heart, both of us thinking "what if," and then to dismiss his indictment, this is a chance few judges have had in the state of Illinois, or any state.
Gov. Quinn, this is your chance. At your inauguration, photos of men and women who died in the service of our country were shown. You never forgot any of them. You came in your car all over Illinois to their funerals. You had a separate reception for their parents because of your great heart.
Now, Gov. Quinn, you have the opportunity to save Illinois taxpayers millions that will go to other purposes. Be assured that Illinois has no citizens who are willing to see the criminal justice system execute an innocent person. But even the U.S. Supreme Court said that executing the innocent is "inevitable," shouldn't Illinois justice be above that?
You can put your signature on the bill and make abolition of the death penalty the law in Illinois.
You can do it for every man and woman who died in action in the service of his or her country in Afghanistan and Iraq. Do it in their name. They did not die in vain.
Sign the bill.
Do it for the people.