Editorial: Gov. Quinn should empty Death Row

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

If Gov. Quinn signs the bill that would abolish Illinois’ death penalty, what happens to the 15 men already on Death Row and perhaps others whose cases are working their way through the system?

Those cases wouldn’t be derailed by the new law, which would go into effect July 1, but Quinn would be wise to follow the lead of New Jersey’s governor when that state abolished the death penalty in 2007 — commute every existing death sentence to life in prison without parole.

One of the most damning criticisms of the death penalty is that it is arbitrary; some people are dispatched to Death Row and executed while others who commit similar crimes are not. That was a primary reason the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 overturned all death sentences and told states to revise their laws.

But the new laws proved to be no less capricious. The last man to be executed in Illinois was Andrew Kokoraleis in 1999, who participated with three other men in gruesome murders of women. But the alleged ringleader of that group was sentenced to 120 years.

If Quinn fails to act, Illinois could well embark on a new era of disparate justice. People who were sentenced before 2003 — when former Gov. George Ryan commuted all death sentences — or who committed their crimes after July 1 of this year would be immune from capital punishment, while those sentenced in between still could be executed if Quinn or some future governor allows the state’s current moratorium on executions to lapse.

That level of arbitrariness can’t be permitted in a civil society.

Let us be clear: We feel zero compassion for the 15 men now on Death Row. The record seems clear that they are guilty of unspeakable acts. Paul Runge, for example, raped, killed and set fire to a Chicago mother and her 10-year-old daughter. Dion Banks murdered a woman in front of her two young sons when she resisted a car-jacking.

But we don’t buy the argument from some death penalty supporters that the alternative of life in prison is a pleasant round of free prison meals and leisurely afternoons of TV.

Just ask now-exonerated Randy Steidl, who did 12 years on Death Row for a 1986 Downstate double murder he didn’t commit and then 5½ years of regular prison time until he was freed for good.

“Life without parole is very harsh,” says Steidl, who finally got out of prison in 2004. “You live in a four-foot by eight-foot cage with another person who might be a homicidal maniac or a mentally ill person.

“To try to live like that is a fate worse than death to me. . . . There were a few times that if they had rolled that gurney by my cell, I would have buckled myself onto it because after five minutes on that gurney, your problems are gone.”

Already, Illinois in recent years has freed 20 Death Row inmates whose convictions didn’t hold up upon close re-examination. Gov. Ryan, when he cleared 171 people from Death Row in 2003, said he did so because he couldn’t be certain that all of them were in fact guilty, given Illinois’ sorry record.

We don’t want to learn too late that one of the cases now working through the system or one of the men now on Death Row doesn’t belong there.

And ultimately, there is simply no place for the death penalty, for even the most heinous crimes, in a civilized society.

As Randy Steidl also said:

“Human beings should not be in the business of taking another person’s life.”