Death penalty moratorium: Back on the burners

Death penalty moratorium: Back on the burners

Originally posted: February 11, 2008

DuPage County State's Attorney Joe Birkett along with Republican state reps Dennis Reboletti of Elmhurst and Randy Ramey of West Chicago have called a news conference for tomorrow at the DuPage County Sheriff’s office.

The lawmakers plan to announce the introduction of a resolution calling on Gov. Rod Blagojevich to lift the informal, eight-year moratorium on executions and the introduction of legislation to expand the death penalty by making those who murder children 16 and under automatically eligible for the death penalty (the current age under the law is 12 and under).

Anita Alvarez, the Democratic nominee for Cook County State's Attorney, has also put the moratorium in play, calling during a radio interview over the weekend for a statewide advisory referendum this fall and saying she'd like to shrink the number of defendants eligible for the death penalty.

In speaking with host Bill Cameron on WLS-AM 890's "Connected to Chicago" program, Alvarez said she felt capital punishment is "appropriate for the most serious cases -- the most heinous of cases," but said there are currently "way too many qualifying factors and those need to be eliminated."

Comment - Call for death penalty is oddly out of place

I realize that Du Page County State's Atty. Joe Birkett and many other prosecutors across Illinois are very itchy to have the state resume executions. The last one was nearly 9 years ago, just before then-Gov. George Ryan unilaterally declared a moratorium on the practice.

But it took a lot of nerve for Birkett to hold a news conference last week at the DuPage County sheriff's office calling on Gov. Rod Blagojevich to lift the moratorium.

Why? Because many of us consider the DuPage County sheriff's office to be the birthplace of the movement that gave rise to moratorium in the first place: It was there that lawmen botched the investigation into the murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico. Their blundering led to two innocent men being sent to Death Row and galvanized the legal and journalistic communities to uncover the raft of other injustices that prompted Ryan to declare the capital system "broken."