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Additional News Coverage From Illinois

By Steve Hall

Today's Chicago Sun-Times reports, "If gov bans death penalty, 15 on Death Row may die."  It's by Stephen Di Benedetto. Beyond deciding whether to abolish Illinois? death penalty, Gov. Quinn faces a moral dilemma involving the fate of the 15 condemned killers now on Death Row. The death-penalty repeal bill that narrowly passed the General Assembly last month would ban executions going forward. But it wouldn?t apply retroactively to those already sentenced to death, including condemned killers like Brian Dugan, who was convicted of the 1983 murder of Naperville 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. If Quinn signs the death-penalty abolition legislation, should he also spare the state?s current Death Row population from execution and commute their sentences to life in prison without parole? Or, should he simply postpone a decision until a potential second term or place it in the lap of a future governor since none of the inmates is likely to exhaust his appeals and face death until sometime after 2014? On Friday, Quinn would not divulge his plans for the death-penalty legislation or whether he is considering a commutation for the 15 inmates now awaiting a death sentence as part of a possible bill signing...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on February 09, 2011 (boomark / email).