Death penalty bill heads to governor

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – The Illinois Senate voted Tuesday to abolish capital punishment, sending the historic issue to Gov. Pat Quinn and putting the state back at the center of an ongoing national debate.

Quinn wouldn’t say whether he would sign the legislation.

In a state that has removed 20 wrongly condemned people from death row since 1987, the Senate voted 32-25 to end execution more than a decade after a former governor halted the punishment he called “haunted by the demon of error.”

“We have a historic opportunity today, an opportunity to part company with countries that are the worst civil rights violators and join the civilized world by ending this practice of putting to death innocent people,” said Sen. Kwame Raoul, the Chicago Democrat who sponsored the measure.

Illinois would be the fourth state since 2007 to rid its books of capital punishment.

But Democrat Quinn, already wrapped up in a debate over a massive tax increase that could sully his political future, won’t say what he will do with an issue historically so explosive it can end careers. He supports the death penalty but said he would not lift the moratorium on executions imposed in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan until he was sure the system worked.

National experts and advocates said repeal in Illinois – which has executed a dozen people in the last three decades and at one time had 170 condemned inmates – puts weight behind the national discussion.

“This is a state in which this was used and then stopped, it was debated for years, fixed – or reformed – and finally there was a resolution by just getting rid of it, so that’s about as thorough a process as any state could do,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “That’s significant.”