Illinois Moratorium on Death Penalty...Instant Life Sentence?

Factual Questions
1

Illinois has a death penalty on its books but following the release of 13(?) inmates found to eb innocent the Governor decided to halt further executions.

My question is do death row inmates have a case against the state that their death penalty sentence is now, in effect, a life sentence?

I know it sounds silly, who wouldn’t be happier with a life sentence than a death sentence? Still, there have been cases where a criminal actually asked for the death penalty so I suppose it can happen where someone would be put out by a moratorium.

Even if an inmate just wanted to be a thorn in the system’s side could he make a case of this by saying that he was not sentenced to life in prison? Supposedly it sucks to be on deathrow and the state’s moratorium is merely dragging out a miserable time for the prisoner (ignore for a moment whether you think they actually deserve to have a miserable time).

I dunno…just curious about this.

2

Good question, and I will try as I might to not get worked into a lather.

I want to make this point clear:

GOVENOR RYAN HAD NO AUTHORITY TO DECLARE A MORATORIUM ON THE DEATH PENALTY!!!

If anyone had the balls to call him on it, and push for the execution of someone who has been sentenced to death (especially if the defendant wants it to happen), they could go to the Supreme Court and ask them to set a date for execution. The govenor then would have to exercise his actual authority and grant clemency, but he can’t jsut say no more death penalty cases. What’s going on in Illinois is that no one is calling him on it. Nobody wants to do what could turn into a political nightmare, and ask that an execution goes forward.

If your hypothetical defendant wants to raise hell, he could say, hey, I want to be killed, come get me! That would open a can of worms that would make for some very interesting law. But legally, these people are still sentenced to the death penalty, it’s just that they aren’t currently executing it.

P.S. I’m against the death penalty anyway, but I hate it when politics gets into the criminal justice system.

3

And as a follow up. The moratorium has not changed the sentence of anyone. I guess the stance is that by declaring a ‘moratorium’, he’s publically stating in advance that anyone who comes up with an execution date will get a stay, until such a time that he’s either not in office or convinced that the moratorium has been lifted.

What you are suggesting is that the gov has commuted their sentences, he has not. They are still legally (at this point) sentenced to death, however, the gov. is not signing any execution orders.

4

I may have been vague on this point. I do know that he did not commute their sentence and that’s exactly the point.

If you are on Death Row you are kept in a separate area of the prison. You are not allowed the normal day-to-day interaction that other inmates get (this might not be a bad thing). Is it possible that a life in prison sentence can ever get parole? I don’t know but that is denied to the death row inmate as well.

Assume Governor Ryan never revokes his moratorium and no future governor has the political clout or will to do so either. Essentially the people sitting on death row have been given a life in prison sentence.

Shit or get off the pot. If you give a death sentence then use it. If you don’t want to put your citizens to death then fine…put them in normal prison with everyone else.

5

Or debates and political views into GQ? :smiley:

I suspect that most states, in the wake of the banning of the death sentence during the '70s, have some provision for holding “Death Row” inmates for life should something arise to make executions not possible. Likely, the Governor will be forced at some future date to lift the moratorium, or to get the laws changed to abolish the death penalty.

6

Hamlet, I’m not sure I would agree with this statement. Article V of the Illinois State Constitution gives the Governor the following powers:

I don’t have a Black’s Law Dictionary handy, but the Oxford Concise defines “reprieve” as follows:

I would interpret the mercy power of the Governor as including the power to postpone the execution of a person on death row.

I also would disagree with your statement:

.

Where you see politics, I see a governor conscientiously carrying out his duty under § 8 of Article V:

If the Governor truly believes that there is reason to doubt that the laws of Illinois with respect to the death penalty are not being faithfully executed (i.e., more innocent people have been released from death row than have been executed), isn’t it his duty to use the reprieve power while cauing investigations to be made of the system? (I think this point is made all the more compelling because Governor Ryan is pro-death penalty, if I recall correctly - he’s carrying out his duties to ensure faithful execution of the laws, even if he personally agrees with execution of the criminals.)

Note: I’m just going by the bare text of the state constitution, so could be mistaken; would be pleased to hear other views.

7

Hi Northern Piper!

There is no doubt that the Governor has the power to grant reprieves, pardons, and commutations of sentences. But these can only be done on a case by case basis, not on the grand scale of “Illinois will not execute any more people on death row.” I would be very interested if someone said, here judge look at Reginald Chapman. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of his ex girlfriend and their 5 month old child. He confessed, and there was a ton of corroborating evidence. (for those interested its 194 Ill.2d 186). He’s guilty and we want to execute him. George then has one choice, grant him a pardon, a reprieve, or commute his sentence. Then they go to the next guy on death row, and so on and so on. George would have to use his powers in each case. He can do it on a case by case basis, but not an overall moratorium.

As to George’s Faithful execution of the laws, I think that means the exact opposite. The LAW in Illinois is that we execute people who have been sentenced to the death penalty. He is, in fact, NOT faithfully executing that law, instead he is trying to up his popularity in the polls. I am convinced the only reason Ryan started the “moratorium” was to get the heat off of himself for the numerous scandals he was involved in. As for him being in favor of the death penalty… he was, but he aint no more. He said he’d even have trouble allowing the execution for Timothy McVeigh, who killed 167 people.

Finally, the politics in the criminal justice system that I was referring to was not only Ryan’s decision to declare the moratorium, It is also aimed at the powers that be that won’t challenge his moratorium and ask that these sentences be served. Those are all political decisions that have no place in the criminal justice system.

8

Ya know, there is a difference between “legal” and “just”.

If you have a situation where 12 or 13 people on death row have been proved to be innocent then you have a serious, serious problem. The idea that an innocent person might be killed for a crime he/she did not commit is pretty damn scary.

Ryan’s justification for halting executions is that Illinois needs to look at the situation and make sure that those on death row actually are guilty of a capital crime and not the victim of overzealous prosecutors, incompetant legal representation, or other screw up. I don’t understand why anyone would have a problem with this. Even the most die-hard death penalty supporter isn’t going to advocate executing the innocent.

If that means some guilty scum have to rot in a cell for a bit longer than anticipated, so be it. You can always kill someone later, but once their dead you can’t say “oops” and bring a wrongly convicted person back to life. If said scum took their case to the Supreme Court I wouldn’t be surprised if that court sided with Ryan. Remember the SC stopped all executions in this country for a time, basically telling the states they had to reform their death penalty laws and means of executions.

I doubt very much that Illinois is going to get rid of the death penalty. This is just a hiatus until the state starts killing again. Once the Illinois government is satisfied the innocent have been freed and the guys still on death row are guilty they’ll get the poison needles out again and start strapping the condemned to gurneys again.

9

Hi, Hamlet.

I’d not looked at your profile before my last post, so naturally I do defer to your knowledge of the law in your state. However, I guess I just have three comments:

  • historically, one of functions of a clemency power has been the final safeguard against an unsafe conviction or sentence, the kind that the courts can’t fix for some reason. I wouldn’t have thought it out of line for a governor to say, “I’ve got serious concerns that there are systemic problems with the way the death penalty has been administered in this state, and I’m going to take that systemic problem into account in using the clemency power.”

  • based on that systemic concern, why can’t the Governor say, “I’m not able to do a thorough assessment personally of every death sentence, so I’ll set up a review process to do so. In the interim, my concern about the systemic problem is so serious that I will issue a reprieve to prisoner A, and to prisoner B, and so on” - i.e. - the systemic problem is so signofcant that he believes it justifies individual reprieves to each prisoner on death row pending the review.

  • I would have thought that “faithful execution of the laws” would have a broader meaning than just “carry out a particular court-ordered execution.” Isn’t it the governor’s obligation to look at the broad picture as well? After all, the mere existence of the clemency powers suggests that the Governor’s duties include the power to stop a court-ordered execution, even if it was lawfully made, if the Governor believes there are problems with it. Given that the entire criminal law system, with legal and constitutional protections, has a dual function: to ensure that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free; isn’t it open to the Governor to decide that “faithful execution of the laws” means he should ensure that the state is only executing those who truly deserve it?

I guess I just can’t get away from that 13-12 stat: 13 death row prisoners released because they were innocent, 12 executed. I just would have thought that it would be open to the Governor to conclude that there was a systemic problem in the execution of the laws relating to the death penalty, and to use the clemency powers as a temporary holding power while the issue was reviewed.

I certainly appreciate your tolerance in letting me pontificate about your legal system. :slight_smile: Feel free to jump in and be critical next time a thread gets started about the Canadian justice system.

:cool:

10

My main problem with the “moratorium” is that the governor is not legally justified in declaring it. He has no power to ignore the will of the legislature which enacted the laws, or the courts which have reviewed the laws and the cases. If Gov. Ryan, in declaring his moratorium, basically said: “Well, the State of Illinois is not going to follow these laws…so there.” HE CAN’T DO THAT. What if he decided to declare a moratorium on the payment of food stamps, or he says: Well, I’m against gun control, so I declare a moratorium on enforcing the laws that don’t allow people to carry loaded weapons on the street. He has totally ignored the constitution, the laws, and the proper procedure.

Piper is absolutely right that if the Governor wanted to, he could easily grant clemency, commutation, or reprieves to every person currently on death row. That would have the same net effect as his declaring a moratorium, nobody is put to death by the State. That is fine by me, because Ryan is then not putting himself above the laws and Constitution, and is merely exercising his given powers. He can review every single case himself, go over the trial transcripts, hell, he can hold his own trial if he wants, and then decide for himself if the person is guilty or not. Then he can decide how to handle the death penalty in a case by case basis. However, He doesn’t want to do that. Why not? POLITICS!!! Gov. Ryan declares his moratorium, just so he wouldn’t have to deal with people saying: Hey, you just granted clemency to a guy who strangled to death a five month old kid, and beat up, strnagled and killed the kid’s mom. The physical evidence ties him to the crime, and he confessed!!! What is your problem? Instead he gets to take the high road and declare an illegal “moratorium”, and he looks like a genius, rather than having to put a face on the killers and the families of the victims. All nice neat and clean, but ILLEGAL and UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

As an aside, Gov. Ryan ran as a pro-death penalty candidate, then flip-flopped. The flip-flop happened to coincide with constant headlines regarding his scandals. Not a coincidence.

Hi Broomstick!

As I indicated above, I agree with a majority of what you said. The death penalty system needed to be investigated, and changes have in fact been made. I would never advocate that the State should kill innocent people…nobody would. But Governor Ryan has the tools and the time to actually determine it, ON A CASE BY CASE BASIS!!! He gets to determine that, hey, I’m convinced that Bad Guy X is in fact guilty, that we aren’t killing an innocent person. He can then decide whether to exercise his executive powers and grant clemency, or to say, well, he is guilty so lets execute him. I want him to make these case-by-case decisions! But, as I said above, he doesnt want to! He wants to have the moral high ground, no matter how illegal it is.

Finally, when the SC stopped executions, they did so because they found the DP, as executed, was violating the Constitution. They did not say, well, I personally don’t believe in the DP anymore, so you can’t do it any more. they followed the law and the consitution, while Ryan just ignores it. That’s the big difference. That’s why I want somebody to challenge it. God knows what Ryan will decide he doesn’t like anymore, next!

11

Hamlet:
I defer to your expertise on this issue but regarding Governor Ryan’s powers does he really need to review each and every case before granting a repreive? I mean, couldn’t he just sit there and one by one say, “You’re repreived…next, you’re repreived…next, etc.”? Or in order to grant clemency or a repreive does the law insist he perform some sort of detailed investigation of his own?

If the Governor is not forced to do a detailed review doesn’t his overarching, and by your stance illegal, moratorium amount to, “I am stating unequivocally that every guy you bring before me will receive an indefinite repreive. If you want to waste my time (and the taxpayers money) going through the motions I will or you can just accept the blanket moratorium for what it is and get on with other business.” (Or something like that.)

12

Indeed. But not in GQ. I’d admonish all participants to stick to the facts, please.

13

Actually, you have to seek a pardon, commutation, or reprieve. This requires a petition in writing to be filed with the Prisoner Review Board. The petition then should be sent to the state’s attorney from the county where the conviction happened. The Board then can have a hearing, if requested, but it doesn’t have to. The Board then makes a recommendation to the Governor.

There is no need for the Governor or the Board, to actually review anything other than the petition. I would hope, if Ryan is so concerned about executing innocent people, he would actually conduct an investigation into the case. He’s chosen to not do anything, and just declare a moratorium.

Again, Ryan could grant a reprieve to anyone who asks, but the fact remains he HASN’T. Because he doesnt want to because then he gets political heat for reprieving a guilty killer. Instead he just ignores the constitution, the laws, and procedure. I just want someone to call him on it.