February 05 

2 cases, 2 races, 2 decisions on death penalty

By Dawn Turner Trice

This is a tale of two murder cases and how they provide yet another example of what is wrong with the death penalty.

The first case is that of Marilyn Lemak, who on a snowy afternoon in March 1999, drugged and methodically smothered her three children in the family's fairytale Naperville home.

The second involves Jacqueline Williams, who--along with two co-defendants--on a cold day in November 1995, murdered a pregnant Debra Evans and cut a healthy newborn from her womb as she lay dying in her Addison apartment. The attackers also murdered two of Evans' children.

From the beginning, both murders were in the national spotlight because of the heinous nature of the crimes. And both women were eligible for the death penalty.

Williams, found guilty in 1998, now sits on Death Row.

Lemak, found guilty last December, probably never will.

Last week, DuPage County State's Atty. Joseph Birkett, whose office prosecuted the Williams and Lemak cases, announced that he would not recommend such a fate for Lemak.

Instead, Birkett, one of the state's strongest advocates for capital punishment, said he would ask Judge George Bakalis to sentence Lemak to life in prison without possibility of parole. (A pre-sentencing hearing is set for Feb. 13.)

So what is wrong with the death penalty? Moral concerns aside, one of the vexing problems is that it isn't, and perhaps can never be, administered evenly.

There are too many variables. Race, class and gender (and even politics, among other things) combine to color the decisions of jurors, prosecutors, judges and ordinary people like you and me.

As I examine both murders, I have a hard time distinguishing which was more heinous. But there is a clear difference in the women. Williams is African-American, low-income and has a criminal history. Lemak is white, well-to-do and has no criminal past.

Sure, our inclination is to say one murder was more horrific than the other, that Lemak's was a crime of passion, and Williams' was predatory.

But is it worse that Williams participated in a plot to savagely kill a woman and two of her children; or that Lemak, who was trusted by her children, abused that trust and killed them in the sanctity of their own home?

Is one motive more justifiable than the other? Williams apparently wanted a light-skinned baby. Lemak apparently wanted revenge. Was one woman really more deranged than the other?

From where I sit, either both deserve capital punishment or both deserve life imprisonment.

But from the very beginning, Birkett saw the cases differently. A month after Williams was arrested, he said he would seek the death penalty. There was no hemming or hawing about it.

When Lemak was arrested, he wasn't so sure that he would seek the death penalty. In fact, it took him nearly a year to decide to do so, and then last week he back pedaled saying he wouldn't recommend death because Lemak was depressed at the time of the killings and, among other things, wasn't a future threat to society.

Outside of the clear legal tenets that have to be adhered to, what most of these cases come down to is which story is more empathetic than the other. Then that determines which defendant receives the benefit of the doubt.

And, if you can afford high-powered attorneys, spin-doctors, who have the time and talent to help a judge or jury step outside of their prejudices, then all the better. (Williams had three different public defenders. Lemak had a private attorney.)

What further complicates things is that Birkett is running as a Republican candidate for attorney general and no doubt is painfully aware of the declining support around the state for capital punishment.

How all of this--race, class, politics--fits together is exceedingly hard to tease out.

But what ultimately happened in these two tragic cases was that Lemak got the benefit of the doubt. Williams didn't and now is one of four women--three are African-American, one Hispanic--on Illinois' Death Row.

Whatever positives or negatives we ascribe to persons who are black and poor or white and well-to-do (or any other race-class combination), we all have a hard time moving beyond our preconceptions.

But the big difference is that most of us don't get a chance to play God and help determine who lives and who dies.