Prosecutor backs Illinois inmate's clemency bid
EDWARDSVILLE - Michael Strader, who was 19 at the time of the Madison County shooting, argues in his request for Gov. Pat Quinn's intervention that he should have taken a plea deal for a 50-year sentence, making him eligible for parole in 2017. Strader has served two decades of his sentence and won't be considered for release until 2037.
Rich Rybak, the assistant Madison County state's attorney who prosecuted Strader in 1994 for killing Donnell Awalt and wounding her then-boyfriend, told the Belleville News-Democrat in a letter that he backs Strader's clemency, writing that Strader "is hardly the threatening monster that some who don't know him might claim."
Rybak, now a prosecutor in Missouri's Howell County, added that while he understood the Awalt family's loss, "justice without mercy is no justice at all."
"It would seem that if a 50-year sentence was fair and agreed-to in 1992, then it is fair in 2014," Rybak wrote.
Bill Haine, an Illinois state senator who at the time of the shooting was Madison County's state's attorney and Rybak's boss, called Strader's clemency push "an insult to the family as well as the judge who gave him 90 years," adding that commutation of the sentence would set bad precedent.
"Every guy found guilty after a jury trial would argue they wanted the deal the prosecutor offered before trial. We'd have a million trials overnight and no plea bargains," Haine said. "As far as I'm concerned he should serve all 90 years, and I will urge the governor not to grant a day less than the jury and the judge gave him."
Clara Awalt, Donnell's mother, said the clemency request is reopening old wounds.
"We've tried to go on with our lives, but to slam us back 22 years for no reason at all," she said. "I just don't understand why they're doing this."
Strader insists in his clemency bid that he only remembers "bits and pieces" of drunkenly driving to 17-year-old Donnell's house and confronting her with a gun.
"I don't remember aiming the gun, but I do remember lifting the gun and pulling the trigger until it quit firing," Strader wrote. "I loved her so much. I could not believe that I had just killed someone I loved. There is no justification for what I did. No one deserves that. I wish I could go back and change things. There is no do-over on this."
There's no immediate word on when Quinn may decide the clemency request.