Study: Death penalty flaws still exist

Eight years after Illinois' death penalty moratorium was imposed, many systemic flaws that led to wrongful convictions still exist.

That was the main thrust of an activist group's annual report released Thursday that called upon lawmakers to abolish capital punishment.

The report cites 31 death penalty cases across Illinois in the past five years that ended in acquittals on murder offenses, including six in 2007.

Despite lauded reforms, including a defendant's improved access to quality lawyers, the statistic highlights a continuing failure of the system in screening capital cases, the group insists.

The Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty reviewed 191 pending death penalty cases in 2007, when three men were sentenced to die. More than 80 percent of the prosecutions are taking place in Cook County.

The 2007 report notes:

• An examination of the 31 acquittals sheds light on ongoing problems, such as unreliable confessions and tainted witnesses.

• Less than half the 85 suggested reforms are in place.

• The committee charged with evaluating their effectiveness had its funding cut.

• Fewer death sentences are being handed down -- an average of three a year, compared to about 15 in the mid-1990s.

• The state allocated nearly $73 million to a capital litigation trust fund in five years.

• And four of the 13 men on death row last year had mental health issues. Most were young, black and poor.

The group also argues the system is too arbitrary. For example, a DuPage County jury last year imposed death upon Laurence Lovejoy of Aurora for the rape and murder of his 16-year-old stepdaughter, Erin, in Aurora. But a Cook County jury opted to spare the life of Juan Luna, convicted of killing seven people in the Palatine Brown's Chicken murders.

"The partial reforms have not repaired the system," said Jane Bohman, the group's executive director. "Our legislature can end this crisis once and for all if it would take a hard look at the evidence of ongoing failure and make the call to end our broken capital punishment system."

But others are making a case for lifting the moratorium. Several new studies suggest the death penalty is a deterrent to murder. A group of DuPage County Republicans, including State's Attorney Joe Birkett, argues the reforms are working.

They also introduced other measures, such as making it a capital crime to kill a child 16 or younger (the current law is 12) and reducing the factors from 21 to nine to make a crime eligible for death.

In Illinois, 18 condemned inmates were exonerated after reinstatement of capital punishment in 1977. Former Gov. George Ryan cited some of the cases as an example of a broken system when he declared a moratorium eight years ago. Three years later, he commuted 167 death sentences to life terms.

A moratorium remains in place, but judges and juries still hand out death sentences, albeit with less frequency.

Most recently, on Feb. 27, a DuPage County jury took less than 90 minutes to sentence Eric C. Hanson, 31, of Naperville to death for killing his parents, a sister and her husband in 2005.

Hanson is the 14th man on Illinois' death row.

No one in Illinois has been put to death by lethal injection since the May 1999 execution of Andrew Kokoraleis, prosecuted for his role in nearly 20 cult-like mutilation sex slayings of women in the 1980s in Cook and DuPage.

Of Illinois' condemned, 31-year-old Anthony Mertz will be the first to face execution, but he still has another decade before his appeal rights are exhausted. Mertz was convicted of killing Rolling Meadows native Shannon McNamara, 21, at Eastern Illinois University in 2001.