Full Text of SR0260 096th General Assembly
SR0260 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY
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| SENATE RESOLUTION
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| WHEREAS, In January of 2000, former Illinois Governor | 3 |
| George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois; | 4 |
| before the moratorium, 13 death row inmates were exonerated and | 5 |
| found innocent of the crime for which they were originally | 6 |
| sentenced to death; and
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| WHEREAS, Since 2000, 6 more death row inmates have been | 8 |
| exonerated and found innocent of the crime for which they were | 9 |
| originally sentenced to death; most recently, Nathson Fields | 10 |
| was acquitted on April 8, 2009; the current number of | 11 |
| exonerations in Illinois is 19, and Illinois is second only to | 12 |
| Florida in number of exonerations from death row; and
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| WHEREAS, There is no safeguard that an innocent person | 14 |
| would not be put on death row; the Illinois Commission on | 15 |
| Capital Punishment formed by Governor Ryan in 2000 to study the | 16 |
| death penalty in Illinois concluded that "no system, given | 17 |
| human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or | 18 |
| constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely | 19 |
| that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death"; and
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| WHEREAS, Despite the implementation of reforms to | 21 |
| Illinois' death penalty system by both the Illinois General | 22 |
| Assembly and the Illinois Supreme Court, there remains no |
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| sufficient safeguard against additional innocent persons being | 2 |
| convicted of murder and sentenced to death; and
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| WHEREAS, The death penalty is not a deterrent; in the last | 4 |
| twenty years, states with the death penalty have a higher | 5 |
| murder rate than states which do not; in Illinois, Cook County, | 6 |
| the county with the highest murder rate, has also committed the | 7 |
| most people to death row with no apparent effect on homicides; | 8 |
| in fact, the murder rate in Illinois has gone down since the | 9 |
| moratorium on executions has been in place; and
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| WHEREAS, The cost of the death penalty is prohibitive; the | 11 |
| average cost of a trial in a federal death case is about 8 | 12 |
| times that of a federal murder case in which the death penalty | 13 |
| is not sought; every state that has done a cost study has found | 14 |
| death penalty cases cost millions to hundreds of millions more | 15 |
| than non-death cases, including cases in which the defendant | 16 |
| receives life without parole; and
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| WHEREAS, The State of Illinois can no longer afford to | 18 |
| waste its scarce resources on the death penalty; and
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| WHEREAS, The Cook County Public Defender routinely | 20 |
| depletes its annual funds to pay for capital cases before the | 21 |
| end of the fiscal year, and without the funds, the office is | 22 |
| unable to pay for the help of expert witnesses, as well as the |
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| other additional costs of a death penalty case; the Cook County | 2 |
| Public Defender's 2009 allotment of $1.75 million was exhausted | 3 |
| this month, in large part because 60 percent of the money went | 4 |
| to cover unpaid bills from 2008; and | 5 |
| WHEREAS, The State's budget for Fiscal Year 2009 includes | 6 |
| $10,642,100 for the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, created by | 7 |
| the General Assembly in 2000; the Governor's proposed budget | 8 |
| for Fiscal Year 2010 includes $11,642,100 for the Fund; over | 9 |
| the past 6 fiscal years, the Fund has been allocated just under | 10 |
| $89 million; nevertheless, the Fund's expenditures account for | 11 |
| only part of the true cost of maintaining capital punishment in | 12 |
| Illinois - a cost that is difficult to estimate without | 13 |
| conducting an expensive and comprehensive cost study; and | 14 |
| WHEREAS, A cost study done in the State of New Jersey found | 15 |
| the death penalty has cost New Jersey taxpayers $253 million | 16 |
| more than the costs that would have been incurred in a system | 17 |
| with a maximum sentence of life without parole; the study | 18 |
| examined the costs of death penalty cases to prosecutor | 19 |
| offices, public defender offices, courts, and correctional | 20 |
| facilities, and the report's authors wrote that the cost | 21 |
| estimate is "very conservative" because other significant | 22 |
| costs uniquely associated with the death penalty were not | 23 |
| available and, "from a strictly financial perspective, it is | 24 |
| hard to reach a conclusion other than this: New Jersey |
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| taxpayers over the last 23 years have paid more than a quarter | 2 |
| billion dollars on a capital punishment system that has | 3 |
| executed no one," the report concluded; since 1982, there have | 4 |
| been 197 capital trials in New Jersey and 60 death sentences | 5 |
| imposed, of which 50 were subsequently reversed; there have | 6 |
| been no executions, and 10 men are housed on the death row; | 7 |
| Michael Murphy, former Morris County prosecutor, remarked: "If | 8 |
| you were to ask me how $11 million a year could best protect | 9 |
| the people of New Jersey, I would tell you by giving the law | 10 |
| enforcement community more resources; I'm not interested in | 11 |
| hypotheticals or abstractions, I want the tools for law | 12 |
| enforcement to do their job, and $11 million can buy a lot of | 13 |
| tools"; and | 14 |
| WHEREAS, Death penalty cases are more expensive at every | 15 |
| stage of the judicial
process than similar non-death cases; | 16 |
| death penalty cases cost more to try, hear, appeal and | 17 |
| incarcerate than non-death cases; a new study in the State of | 18 |
| Maryland released by the Urban Institute on March 6, 2008 | 19 |
| forecasted that the lifetime expenses of capitally-prosecuted | 20 |
| cases since 1978 will cost Maryland taxpayers $186 million; the | 21 |
| study estimates that the average cost to Maryland taxpayers for | 22 |
| reaching a single death sentence is $3 million - $1.9 million | 23 |
| more than the cost of a non-death penalty case; the study | 24 |
| examined 162 capital cases that were prosecuted between 1978 | 25 |
| and 1999 and found that those cases cost $186 million more than |
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| what those cases would have cost had the death penalty not | 2 |
| existed as a punishment; at every phase of a case, according to | 3 |
| the study, capital murder cases cost more than non-capital | 4 |
| murder cases; the 106 cases in which a death sentence was | 5 |
| sought but not handed down in Maryland cost the state an | 6 |
| additional $71 million and those costs were incurred simply to | 7 |
| seek the death penalty even though the ultimate outcome was a | 8 |
| life or long-term prison sentence; and | 9 |
| WHEREAS, There is broad support for abolition of the death | 10 |
| penalty internationally; 137 out of 194 countries worldwide | 11 |
| have abolished the death penalty by law or in practice, | 12 |
| including almost all industrialized western democracies, and | 13 |
| most recently Uzbekistan and Argentina; no nation can become a | 14 |
| member of the European Economic Union without first abolishing | 15 |
| capital punishment; nations that have abolished the death | 16 |
| penalty include Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, | 17 |
| Rwanda, Costa Rica and Ireland; according to a recent Amnesty | 18 |
| International report, the United States in 2008 had a higher | 19 |
| execution rate last year than Pakistan and is ranked the fourth | 20 |
| highest executioner on the planet, behind only China, Iran, and | 21 |
| Saudi Arabia and ahead of Pakistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan, | 22 |
| and North Korea; 93% of the world's executions are carried out | 23 |
| by the United States, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan; | 24 |
| of the 59 countries which still have the death penalty, only 25 | 25 |
| carried out executions last year; therefore, be it
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| RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL | 2 |
| ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we support the | 3 |
| abolition of the death penalty in Illinois.
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