Illinois death penalty system is broken beyond repair. Two years after the moratorium was issued in 2000, the Ryan Commission issued 85 recommendations to improve our death penalty system. Eight years later, there are still gaping issues that make fixing the broken system impossible - less than half of the recommendations have been implemented; there is not enough money to implement recommendations; and numerous local and national organizations, including the Chicago Council of Lawyers and 4000 judges, lawyers and law professors of the American Law Institute (ALI), believe that the system is irrevocably broken. That the ALI walked away from any further efforts to reform the death penalty because of the belief that the system is irretrievably broken and all reform efforts are futile is noteworthy since they drafted the Model Penal Code on capital punishment and assisted states that reinstated the death penalty after 1976.

Take Action Now!

Legislators will have the opportunity to bring an end to Illinois' broken death penalty system this month.

Ask your legislator to support ending the death penalty

The risk of sentencing innocent people to death remains. In recent years, twenty men have been exonerated and freed from Death Row--innocent men threatened with death by Illinois. One came within 48 hours of being executed for a crime he did not commit. In the 10 years since the Moratorium, 7 more inmates have been released from Death Row - only Florida has released more exonerated defendants. The irrevocability of the death penalty counsels against accepting a system with a demonstrably significant rate of error. We cannot guarantee that our death penalty system will not make a fatal mistake and take an innocent life.

The Death Penalty is Arbitrary. According to the Chicago Tribune, "Who gets a sentence of life and who gets a sentence of death is often a matter of random luck, of politics, of geography, even a matter of racism." Since individual juries determine the sentence, imposition of the death penalty is a legal gamble, arbitrarily meted out; thus in Illinois, Brian Dugan got the death penalty; the Brown's Chicken defendants did not.

The broken system does not make society safer. The death penalty is not an essential part of a functioning criminal justice system. We do not need the death penalty to protect society -- Illinois judges already have the authority to sentence capital defendants to natural life without parole. Moreover, the death penalty does not deter crime. Since the moratorium on executions, the murder rate has decreased. States with the death penalty have a consistently higher murder rate than states without it. A 2008 survey showed that 88% of the country's top criminologists do not believe the death penalty acts as a deterrent to homicide and 87% believe abolition of the death penalty would have no significant effect on murder rates.

The broken system is too costly. Even during a moratorium on executions, the death penalty is an expensive and ineffective use of scare resources. From 2003 to 2010 more than $100 million was appropriated to pay just for the prosecution and defense costs alone. The $12-$15 million annual cost to prosecute and defend death penalty cases despite a moratorium prompted voters to support life without parole by a 2 to 1 margin (64% -30%) in a recent Illinois poll.

It is time to end the death penalty in Illinois once and for all. Contact your legislators today and ask them to put an end to this broken, costly system.

The Illinois First Amendment Center (IFAC) Illinois High School Media Mini-Grants Program is seeking applicants for grants that aim to help Illinois public or private high schools with existing media programs improve their First Amendment activities.

Funds can help equip newsrooms with hardware and/or software needed to produce print or online newspaper; expand or improve multi-media training program for students; increase student broadcast media; develop training programs to improve newspaper copyediting; expand photojournalism programs or training; provide reporters with training on investigative reporting; launch/establish a new Web reporting version of an existing publication; advance journalism excellence and free expression; educate students on news literacy; and improve First Amendment awareness among students.

The funding is not aimed at starting a journalism program where none existed. However, if seeking funds for a new journalism effort, please inquire about the 2010-2011 Illinois High School Newspaper Contest for Illinois high schools that have not had a scholastic journalism product within the past two years. Please keep in mind that this program is also not intended to help fund yearbooks.

To apply for the Illinois High School Media Mini-Grants Program, complete the grant application request form and submit it with narrative via email to Sue Montalvo, IFAC director, at smontalvo@illinoispress.org on or before January 15, 2011.

For more information and grant guidelines, visit the Illinois First Amendment Center.

By Harvey Grossman, Legal Director

On November 2, voters in Illinois will decide whether to amend our state constitution to allow for a recall election for the office of governor. While the concept of recall raises no civil liberties concerns, the process proposed in the amendment is contrary to democratic principles and violates the constitution.
Recall is a political matter. In most states with recall, the law requires no grounds or bad conduct by the office holder and the process directly expresses the will of the voters through a special election. Impeachment, the other mechanism by which an official may be removed from office, requires specific wrongdoing and is a legal process carried out by the legislature. Eighteen states provide for the recall of state officers and the requirements generally are rigorous. Besides the 2003 recall of California Governor Grey Davis, only one other governor has ever been recalled-- Governor Lynn Frazier of North Dakota in 1921.
Those who favor recall believe it places deserved power in the hands of the voters and eliminates the need to rely on legislators to impeach officials. Objectors, on the other hand, believe terms of office are relatively short and that recall elections are unnecessarily expensive. Whatever one may think of the merits of recall, everyone agrees that the procedures for recall must be fair and treat all voters equally. Unfortunately, the Illinois proposal does not meet these basic requirements.
The amendment to be considered by Illinois voters requires that a recall petition be signed by a number of voters equal to at least 15% of the total votes cast for governor in the last gubernatorial election, with at least 100 signatures from each of at least 25 separate counties. It is this requirement for voter signatures from multiple counties that throws an unconstitutional wrench in the works.
Nearly 50 years ago, the Supreme Court affirmed the core principle of "one man, one vote". This value is now deeply engrained in our national psyche, as well as our law. In addition to apportionment schemes, the courts have applied the doctrine to the collection of signatures as part of an electoral process, including for the nomination of candidates, the formulation of new political parties and other voter initiatives. In fact, the Supreme Court has required that all procedures that are an integral part of the election process must pass muster under one person, one vote. The collection of signatures for a recall election clearly falls within the rule.
The proposed constitutional amendment violates one person, one vote because by requiring 100 signatures from each of at least 25 separate counties, the signatures of electors in less populous counties will have greater value than the signatures of electors in more populous counties. While one person, one vote generally requires election districts to have approximately equal numbers of voters, the populations of registered voters in Illinois counties vary widely, from 3300 in Pope County to nearly 2.9 million in Cook County.
For example, using the 2006 gubernatorial election as an index, a recall petition would require approximately 530,000 signatures. Under the proposed amendment the electorate in Illinois' most populous 24 counties (6.4 million voters) which contains 84% of the registered voters could not petition for a recall, but 530,000 of the remaining 16% of registered voters (1.2 million) properly distributed among the 78 remaining counties could successfully petition for the recall of a governor. This disparity clearly violates the one person, one vote principle.
It may be our Legislature wanted to insure broad geographical support for a recall effort. But the Supreme Court in Moore v. Ogilvie (a case that came from Illinois) long ago rejected that objective as a valid justification for imposing a geographical signature requirement on districts with varying numbers of electors. All voters, the Court said, must be treated equally whether they are urban or rural, or come from sparsely settled or populous counties.
Passage of the proposed amendment will only lead to voter distrust and confusion. The unfair burden the amendment places on a future recall effort is substantial and unconstitutional. The amendment, if passed, likely will be challenged in the courts, either by voters seeking recall or by a corrupt governor seeking to stave off a recall election. When faced with the issue, the judiciary will strike down the entire amendment unless it finds that the legislature intended to have a recall amendment even in the absence of the multi-county signature requirement. Whatever the resolution of that issue may be, voters who support recall should not have to depend on its outcome to give meaning to their vote. The Legislature should go back to the drawing board on recall.
crossposted in the Chicago Tribune