Los Angeles Times

Monday, January 31, 2000

Illinois Suspends Death Penalty

CHICAGO--Gov. George Ryan wants to know why more Illinois death sentences have been overturned than carried out, and is suspending executions altogether while the state looks into the matter.

Ryan planned to announce today that he is creating a special panel to study the state's capital punishment system. The probe will focus on what happened in 13 death penalty cases that were overturned when the convicted person later was found innocent.

"You have a system right now ... that's fraught with error and has innumerable opportunities for innocent people to be executed," Ryan spokesman Dennis Culloton told the Chicago Tribune. The governor, who still supports use of the death penalty, "is determined not to make that mistake."

Ryan has not decided how to choose the panel's members or what its deadlines would be, Culloton said.

Nebraska is the only one of 38 states with the death penalty that considered a similar step, but a moratorium passed by the state Legislature last year was vetoed by the governor.

The Illinois House last year approved a bill to impose a moratorium, but it failed in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Since Illinois' death penalty was reinstated in 1977, 13 death row inmates have been cleared -one more than the number of inmates the state has executed.

In one high-profile case, Anthony Porter spent 15 years on death row -once coming within two days of being executed -before a college journalism class proved his innocence. Porter was released from prison last year.

The governor "still can't answer the question: How do you prevent another Anthony Porter?" Culloton said.

Within the past month, Cook County prosecutors dropped charges against a former Chicago police officer who was convicted and sentenced to die based on the word of a jailhouse informant.