The luxury of capital punishment

By Thomas P. Sullivan

Thomas P. Sullivan is a partner at Jenner and Block and served as co-chair of the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment. He was the U.S. attorney for the Northern District

May 15, 2002, Chicago Tribune

When Gov. George Ryan's commission on capital punishment issued its report last month, it recommended 85 reforms designed to make the death-penalty system more accurate, fair and just.

The reforms also will make the system vastly more expensive, requiring substantial funding by state and local governments. Here are just a few examples of new expenses: the creation of a state forensic laboratory; development of a comprehensive DNA database; availability of forensic testing at state expense in capital cases; videotaping of all questioning and lineups of murder suspects at police stations; police recording equipment, personnel and facilities; more resources for the defense of indigent defendants in capital cases; additional pretrial discovery procedures and hearings; and post-conviction proceedings to establish a convicted defendant's innocence regardless of the passage of time.

Ryan has emphasized that when life or death is in the balance, cost cannot stand in the way of achieving a correct and fair result. But Illinois is already experiencing serious budget problems. How will it pay the additional costs of reforming the capital-punishment system? Even more to the point, will the costs justify the results?
Proponents have justified capital punishment on the basis that it deters would-be murderers. A majority of the commission's 15 members rejected this view. If swift and certain punishment is deemed important, the public should know that in more than half of Illinois death cases, the reviewing courts returned the cases to the trial courts for further proceedings, often for new trials. In more than 25 percent of those cases, the death sentences were replaced by life sentences or terms of years

Prior to the moratorium, extensive state and federal court proceedings, followed by appeals for clemency to the governor, resulted in an average time from a sentence of death until execution of more than 13 years.

The cost of executing a defendant already exceeds the cost of imprisoning the defendant for life. Studies have repeatedly shown that it is substantially more expensive to carry out a death sentence than to imprison a defendant for life.
The governor's commission warned that, even if all proposed 85 reforms were enacted, "no system, given human nature and frailties, could ever be devised or constructed that would work perfectly and guarantee absolutely that no innocent person is ever again sentenced to death."

Lawmakers and the public must address the question of costs and the allocation of our limited state resources.

Is capital punishment a luxury we can no longer afford?

I have been involved in the criminal-justice system for more than 45 years as a prosecutor and defense lawyer. I have come to the view that the state will make the best use of public funds by substituting life imprisonment for capital punishment.
We will substantially reduce direct costs, avoid the risk of more near-fatal errors, put an end to questions about racial discrimination in the enforcement of the Illinois death-penalty system, and make funds available for crime prevention and rehabilitation.
We will, as well, focus attention on the compelling need for reforms in the entire Illinois criminal-justice system rather than on the tiny fraction of cases that lead to the penalty of death.

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune