Illinois Governor Proposes Death Penalty Revisions

May 13, 2002

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  - Illinois, one of two states that has suspended the death penalty pending review, would vastly scale back executions under legislation proposed on Monday by Gov. George Ryan.

"It is imperative that we move forward ... to fix our broken justice system," said Ryan, who put capital punishment on hold two years ago after investigations revealed innocent people were being put on death row.

Ryan's proposal follows recommendations issued by a panel in April.

It would ban the execution of people who are mentally retarded, require that juries be told to consider life in prison as an alternative, reduce the number of factors that make a crime punishable with death from 20 to five, and ban the death penalty when a conviction is based only on the word of a jailhouse "snitch."

 Maryland last week joined Illinois as the only other death penalty state to place a moratorium on executions. Gov. Parris Glendening said none of Maryland's 13 death-row inmates would be executed pending review of the system's fairness on racial and geographic grounds.

 The Illinois panel was silent on the issue of whether capital punishment should be abolished altogether, although a majority of the task force members said separately they favor scrapping it.

 According to the Death Penalty Information Center, in the last 29 years 100 people have been freed across the United States after being sentenced to death.

 Ryan imposed the moratorium in early 2000 after the exoneration of 13 death-row inmates.

Thirty-eight states have death penalty laws on their books. Last year, there were 3,711 prisoners on death row in the United States, according to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. Since 1976, 773 people have been executed.

U.S. opinion polls show that two-thirds of Americans still back capital punishment, though the level of support has declined in recent years.