The following is Chicago Tribune's editorial in response to Gov. Quinn's decision to sign the bill abolishing the death penalty in Illinois.
Gov. Pat Quinn made history as quietly as possible Wednesday. In a private meeting with a small group of supporters, he signed into law a bill that abolished the death penalty in Illinois. He also commuted the sentences of the state's 15 death row inmates to life in prison without parole.
It was "the most difficult decision I have made as governor," Quinn told reporters. We believe that, and we warmly commend him for that decision.We understand why Quinn chose to avoid the fanfare that often accompanies the signing of major legislation. But this is a big moment, worthy of significant, if sober, celebration. Recognizing the intractable flaws of a system that sent at least 20 innocent men to death row, Illinois has taken a difficult but courageous step. No government can sanction an instrument of justice that takes such risks with the lives of innocent people.
Many people, some of them the surviving relatives of murder victims, are profoundly disappointed. Law enforcement officials have lost a powerful weapon that was wielded, far more often than not, in good faith. But this was the right call.
The political fallout will be considerable. A majority of Illinois voters still support capital punishment, though the numbers are declining. Last October, a Paul Simon Institute poll found that 56 percent of Illinois voters thought the state's 10-year-old moratorium on executions should be lifted. That was despite the well-documented failures of the system, and despite the fact that the reforms recommended by a pair of blue-ribbon commissions had been stalled in the legislature for years.
Quinn's critics will point to the 15 murderers he has let off death row.
One of those inmates is Brian Dugan, who confessed to killing 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville in 1983. We've talked to more than one person who said they supported banning the death penalty but wouldn't mind if Dugan was executed first. That sums up the mixed feelings many people shared as Quinn mulled his decision.
This would be a good time to remind ourselves that two innocent men -- Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez -- spent years on death row after being wrongly convicted of Nicarico's murder. That's a powerful rebuttal to prosecutors' argument that banning the death penalty robs them of the only appropriate punishment for the worst crimes. Justice isn't served if the wrong person pays, especially with his or her life.
It's also a good time to remind ourselves that, through all the twists and turns in that case, Brian Dugan remains alive 28 years after that terrible murder. If Quinn had vetoed this repeal, Dugan would still live many more years before he met the executioner--if he ever did. The death penalty has hardly been swift and sure punishment.
Some lawmakers already are working on legislation to reinstate the death penalty. One bill would make the death penalty applicable under limited circumstances -- if the victim was a child or a police officer, for example, or if there were multiple victims.
Another would set up a panel to decide whether the death penalty could be pursued in any given case. That's meant to address the 2002 finding of the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment that the death penalty is most often pursued when the defendant is poor or a minority or when the victim is white.
Those measures would not come close to addressing the shortcomings that led to Wednesday's historic change.
Illinois will no longer risk executing an innocent person. Illinois is better off without the death penalty.
Steve Chapman, a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board has published the following opinion piece in Saturday's Chicago Tribune.
In the midst of the fall election campaign, Steven Hayes went on trial in New Haven, Conn., in one of the most horrific murder cases in memory. The killers invaded a home, beat a man with a baseball bat, sexually assaulted and strangled his wife and tied up their two daughters before setting a fire that killed them.
It was the sort of crime that could only increase support for the death penalty. This effect had some relevance for the Connecticut governor's race, because it pitted a supporter of capital punishment, Republican Thomas Foley, against Democrat Dannel Malloy, an opponent.
When they debated, Foley promised to veto any bill to abolish the death penalty, while Malloy said, "We know that the application of the death penalty has not always been equal and even." A tough sell, right? But Malloy won.
That's just one of the many indications that capital punishment is on the wane. The popular impulse to put people to death is just not what it used to be.
Executions have fallen by half since 1999. The number of new death sentences is about one-third what it was at the 1996 peak. Even in Texas, long the leading practitioner, death sentences are off by 80 percent. Several states that retain capital punishment have not administered a single lethal injection in the past five years.
The exoneration of 138 death row inmates has weakened public support for the ultimate sanction. In a recent Gallup poll, 64 percent of Americans endorsed it, down from 80 percent in 1994, while opposition has nearly doubled.
A survey commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center found that 61 percent prefer that murderers get some sort of life sentence instead. As a budget priority, the death penalty was ranked seventh out of seven issues.
Did someone mention budgets? They are no friend of an option that requires expensive trials, costly appeals and pricey incarceration arrangements. Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says capital punishment has become "an extreme luxury item."
Even the Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog, which this year offers a charm bracelet for $248,000, has nothing to compare. Maryland has spent $186 million on capital cases over the past 30 years — which comes to $37 million per execution.
The typical Texas death case carries a price tag of $2.3 million. A 2005 study pointed out that "New Jersey taxpayers over the last 23 years have paid more than a quarter billion dollars on a capital punishment system that has executed no one."
You might surmise that death sentences and executions have subsided because the homicide rate has dropped so much. But Zimring finds that the biggest decline has been among murders that aren't eligible for capital punishment. Capital murders have declined far less. There are thousands each year for prosecutors who want to pursue them.
Even among lawmakers, this remedy is losing ground. The New Jersey legislature repealed it in 2007 and New Mexico followed suit last year. New York's death penalty law was overturned in court, but legislators have refused to pass a new one.
Illinois Gov. George Ryan declared an execution moratorium in 2000, and his successors have maintained it. But the moratorium has been, in a sense, the worst of both worlds. While taxpayers continue to incur the costs of seeking death sentences, none is ever carried out.
The cost will disappear if the General Assembly abolishes capital punishment, which opponents intend to propose as soon as it convenes in January. "I really think we're going to get it done," Jim Covington, director of legislative affairs for the Illinois State Bar Association, told me.
That shouldn't be impossible in a state where death row inmates are more likely to be freed than executed. Given Illinois' horrendous budget problems, the point of keeping the death penalty on the books is mysterious. In the last seven years, taxpayers have spent more than $100 million on capital cases even though the death chamber has been turned into a Starbucks
If it is repealed, some people will cheer, some will be angry, and most will pay little attention. In the United States, the death penalty may never die, but its best days are past.
Bassett told the Chicago Tribune that months earlier, he was twice called to meetings with the Republican governor's top attorneys. At one meeting, he said, they expressed unhappiness with the course of the commission's investigation.
"I was surprised that they were involving themselves in the commission's decision-making," said Bassett, an Austin attorney. "I did feel some pressure from them, yes."
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According to Bassett, the governor's attorneys questioned the cost of the inquiry and asked why a fire scientist from Texas could not be hired to examine the case instead of the expert from Maryland that the panel ultimately settled on.
Following the meeting, a staffer from the general counsel's office began to attend the commission's meetings, Bassett said.
And although Bassett said he had hoped his work on the commission would focus solely on forensics, the meetings he described likely will add to questions about Perry's moves.
Bassett told the Tribune the governor's attorneys at the meetings were then-General Counsel David Cabrales and Deputy General Counsel Mary Anne Wiley, one of Perry's top advisers on criminal justice issues. Cabrales, now in private practice, and Wiley referred questions to the governor's press office. A Perry spokeswoman said the governor was not aware of the meetings and called them "regular, routine and expected."
In December, Bassett's nine-member panel voted to hire Craig Beyler of Hughes Associates Inc. to analyze the fire investigation and write a report. That report, made public in late August, contained withering criticism of the fire investigation, and added to a drumbeat of findings critical of the investigation.
Beyler was scheduled to discuss the case at an Oct. 2 commission meeting in Dallas, but three days before the meeting, Perry replaced Bassett and two other commission members, Alan Levy, a prosecutor from Fort Worth, and Aliece Watts, a forensic scientist. Perry named John Bradley, a conservative prosecutor, to replace Bassett as chairman.
Perry called the moves routine but was immediately criticized for actions that seemed aimed at reining in the commission.
Bradley's first order of business was to cancel the public meeting early this month at which Beyler was scheduled to discuss his investigation with the commission.
The inquiry focuses on the fire investigation that led to the conviction and execution of Willingham, who was put to death in February 2004 for setting a 1991 fire that killed his three children in their Corsicana, Texas, home.
The Tribune, which learned of the case after Willingham had been executed, published a story in December 2004 that showed how the original investigation of the fire was deeply flawed, with state and local investigators relying on principles of fire behavior later disproved by advances in fire science.
After that report, the Innocence Project, a New York-based group, and national media outlets began to report on flaws in the case.
Bassett's commission set out to conduct its own investigation.
But, Bassett said, Cabrales told him in February that the Willingham investigation was not the kind of work the legislature intended for the commission.
"I politely said that I'm not sure I agree with that but that I'm certainly willing to go back and look at the statute," Bassett said. A week later, he sent Cabrales and Wiley a letter with a copy of the law creating the commission.
Wiley also questioned the cost of the investigation and, according to Bassett, called the pay to Beyler a waste of state money. Bassett said he defended Beyler as an independent expert. He said he also responded that the commission had unanimously voted to hire Beyler.
Another concern Bassett said he heard from Wiley was possible influence from the Innocence Project, a group that helps free innocent inmates.
Bassett, an attorney who practices criminal defense and family law in Austin, said he agreed about the potential for the Innocence Project to push its own agenda, but he defended the commission's ability to act independently.
Bassett said he was called back to the general counsel's office March 19. At that meeting, Wiley was more cordial, Bassett said, but she also talked about legislators' concerns about the commission's role and hinted the commission's funding might be in jeopardy.
Wiley told Bassett the Willingham investigation should be a lower priority, he said. Other issues, including those directly dealing with crime labs, could be given more attention.
Beyler's report was made public Aug. 24, and questions about how Perry had handled the case grew more intense. The commission planned to study Beyler's report and write a report to be delivered after the new year.
Bassett had told reporters the commission's report would focus on forensics and not decide Willingham's guilt or innocence. He said he had not made up his mind about the case; it was possible, he said, that both sides in the death penalty debate could be dissatisfied with the commission's final report.
He said he is reluctant to tie political motives to what happened. But he said it is a "reasonable conclusion" that the meetings, the commission's push on Willingham and the dismissal of the three commission members are connected. Mostly, though, he said he is worried the commission will not be allowed to finish its work.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has removed a fourth member of a state commission charged with investigating claims that an innocent man may have been executed, his office said.
The Texas governor has now replaced all of the four members that, under law, he is allowed to appoint to the commission. The remaining five members are appointed by the state's lieutenant governor and attorney general.
Perry's critics say his actions are politically motivated, a charge he denies.
The Chicago Tribune is breaking the story that the investigator for the Texas Forensic Science Commission is going to report that the fire for which Cameron Todd Willingham was sentenced to death for setting to murder his children was an accidental fire and not arson. Willingham always maintained his innocence. If the TFSC takes the investigator's report and accepts his conclusions then it could acknowledge in its own report that Texas has executed an innocent person. The Chicago Tribune first reported on Willingham's possible innocence in 2004 and followed up in 2006.
Excerpt:
In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson -- a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.
The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country's busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.
Indeed, the report concludes there was no evidence to determine that the December 1991 fire was even set, and it leaves open the possibility the blaze that killed three children was an accident and there was no crime at all -- the same findings found in a Chicago Tribune investigation of the case published in December 2004.
Willingham, the father of those children, was executed in February 2004. He protested his innocence to the end.
The Tribune obtained a copy of the review by Craig Beyler, of Hughes Associates Inc., which was conducted for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, created to investigate allegations of forensic error and misconduct. The re-examination of the Willingham case comes as many forensic disciplines face scrutiny for playing a role in wrongful convictions that have been exposed by DNA and other scientific advances.
Among Beyler's key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams' house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham's injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.
The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote.
The marshal's findings, he added, "are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation."
Over the past five years, the Willingham case has been reviewed by nine of the nation's top fire scientists -- first for the Tribune, then for the Innocence Project, and now for the commission. All concluded that the original investigators relied on outdated theories and folklore to justify the determination of arson.
Accompanied by 300 supporters standing outside the gates of the Texas Governor's Mansion, family members (pictured) of Cameron Todd Willingham delivered a letter to Gov Perry on October 28, 2006 asking him to stop executions and investigate the case of their step son/uncle to determine if he was wrongfully executed. Eugenia Willingham slipped the letter, along with a copy of an article from the Chicago Tribune that concluded that her stepson was probably innocent, through the bars of the front gate of the mansion and left it lying on the walkway leading to the front door of the mansion. A DPS trooper on duty refused to take the letter, so Eugenia left it on the walkway. According to a Public Information Request sent to Perry by TMN, we know that his staff later retrieved the letter and delivered it to Perry's office, however he never responded to Willingham's family. h/t Stop Executions Blog
Below is a copy of the letter The Honorable Rick Perry Governor of Texas Austin, Texas
October 28, 2006
Dear Governor Perry,
We are the family of Cameron Todd Willingham. Our names are Eugenia Willingham, Trina Willingham Quinton and Joshua Easley. Todd was an innocent person executed by Texas on February 17, 2004. We have come to Austin today from Ardmore, Oklahoma to stand outside the Texas Governor’s Mansion and attempt to deliver this letter to you in person, because we want to make sure that you know about Todd’s innocence and to urge you to stop executions in Texas and determine why innocent people are being executed in Texas.
Todd was not the only innocent person who has been executed in Texas. There have been reports in the media that Ruben Cantu and Carlos De Luna were also innocent people who were executed in Texas. It is too late to save Todd’s life or the lives of Ruben Cantu or Carlos De Luna, but it is not too late to save other innocent people from being executed. We are here today to urge you to be the leader that Texas needs in order to make sure that Texas never executes another innocent person. There is a crisis in Texas regarding the death penalty and we ask you to address the crisis. Because the public can no longer be certain that Texas is not executing innocent people, we urge you to stop all executions.
Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, our son/uncle, Todd Willingham, declared his innocence one last time, saying "I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do." Todd is now dead and can no longer speak for himself, so we have come to Austin to speak for him.
Before Todd’s execution, you were given a report from a prominent fire scientist questioning the conviction, but you did not stop the execution. The author of the report, Gerald Hurst, has said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire."
Another report issued in 2006 by a panel of national arson experts brought together by the Innocence Project concluded that the fire that killed Todd’s three daughters was an accident. The report says that Todd’s case is very similar to the case of Ernest Willis, who was convicted of arson murder and sentenced to death in 1987. Willis served 17 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2004 – the same year Todd was executed. The report says that neither of the fires which Todd and Ernest Willis were convicted of setting were arson. The report notes that the evidence and forensic analysis in the Willingham and Willis cases "were the same," and that "each and every one" of the forensic interpretations that state experts made in both men's trials have been proven scientifically invalid. In other words, Todd was executed based on “junk science”.
Please look into our son/uncle’s case and ask the District Attorney in Corsicana to reopen the investigation into the crime for which my brother was wrongfully executed. You should also establish an Innocence Commission in the next session of the Texas Legislature that could investigate my brother’s case, as well as other cases of possible wrongful executions, such as Ruben Cantu and Carlos De Luna.
Please ensure that no other family suffers the tragedy of seeing one of their loved ones wrongfully executed. Please enact a moratorium on executions and create a special blue ribbon commission to study the administration of the death penalty in Texas. Texas also needs a statewide Office of Public Defenders for Capital Cases. Such an office will go a long way towards preventing innocent people from being executed. A moratorium will ensure that no other innocent people are executed while the system is being studied and reforms implemented.
We look forward to hearing from you and we pledge to work with you to ensure that executions of innocent people are stopped.
Yours sincerely,
Eugenia Willingham Stepmother of Cameron Todd Willingham who raised him from the age of 13 months
Trina Willingham Quinton Niece of Cameron Todd Willingham
Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune is reporting that the state of Texas is hiring a Maryland arson expert to examine the evidence in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham.
In 2004, four fire experts told the Chicago Tribune that the fire that had sent Cameron Todd Willingham to Death Row and later to his execution in Texas might have been an accident rather than a crime.
Nearly two years later, a panel of four other experts who reviewed the case for the Innocence Project came to a similar conclusion, saying the State of Texas had convicted and executed Willingham based on forensic evidence that no longer was considered scientifically valid.
Now what may be the final verdict on the fire, and on Willingham's execution, will be delivered by a Maryland expert, who will examine the evidence in the first state-sanctioned inquiry into a Texas execution. Fire scientist Craig Beyler has been asked by the Texas Forensic Science Commission to conduct an independent review of the case's forensic evidence.
"He appears to be one of the pre-eminent people in the fire and arson investigation field," Samuel Bassett, an Austin attorney and commission member, said of Beyler.
Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project, a non-profit organization responsible for scores of DNA exonerations, called the hiring of Beyler an "encouraging sign" and said he hoped Beyler would be able to "get to the bottom" of the case that sent Willingham to a lethal injection.
"It's essential that this matter is resolved for the sake of those who have been wrongly convicted by unreliable arson evidence, as well as those under investigation in new arson cases," said Scheck, the Innocence Project's co-director.
The Innocence Project filed the complaint that prompted the commission's inquiry. Willingham was executed by lethal injection in 2004 for setting the December 1991 fire that killed his three young daughters in the small Texas town of Corsicana. He maintained his innocence at trial, through his years on Death Row and before he was executed.
The Tribune investigated the case in late 2004. As part of its investigation, the paper asked four fire experts from across the country to review the forensic evidence; the four concluded the indicators of arson that state and local officials cited in their case against Willingham at his 1992 trial had been debunked by universally recognized advances in fire science.
The experts said it was possible the fire at the Willingham home was an accident, as Willingham had claimed.
The Innocence Project's experts, who performed the 2006 review at no cost, came to the same conclusion. In one of its harshest criticisms of the original investigation, the panel said the fire marshal's testimony at Willingham's trial about the indicators of arson he said he found "means absolutely nothing."
The Forensic Science Commission was created in 2005 to investigate allegations of forensic error and misconduct in the country's busiest death-penalty state. The Willingham case is its first capital case.
Bassett said he hoped Beyler would be able to complete his review by early April. Beyler will write a report and may make recommendations to the commission.
It is not clear whether Beyler would conclude whether Willingham was innocent. Even if he finds that the science used at the time was flawed, as the other experts have, he may not take the next step and say Texas was wrong to execute Willingham, though that would be the clear implication.
"If [Beyler's report] is critical of the arson testimony," said Bassett, "then theoretically it's possible that could be the basis for a broader conclusion about the original conviction."
The prosecution's evidence included a jailhouse informant named Johnny Webb who testified Willingham, while both were behind bars, confided that he had set the fire. Jailhouse informants, however, are considered by the legal system as among the least credible witnesses. Such testimony has played a role in numerous prosecutions in which inmates were later exonerated.
Navarro County District Atty. R. Lowell Thompson, who was not in office when Willingham was tried or executed, said he would cooperate with any investigation but had not been contacted by the Forensic Science Commission. He has not reviewed the case.
