Death penalty skips '03
No one sentenced to die in Cook County for first time since '77
By Jeff Coen
Tribune staff reporter
January 2, 2004

In the year since former Gov. George Ryan granted clemency to all those awaiting execution in the state, not a single Cook County defendant has been sent to Death Row.

In fact, 2003 will go down as the first time since capital punishment was reinstated in Illinois in 1977 that the county has not seen a death sentence, according to an analysis of state and court records. Statistics show the state's largest county historically outpaces the rest of Illinois in death sentences at a rate of nearly 2-to-1.

Judges, attorneys and analysts said a variety of factors could have contributed to Cook County's criminal court not logging a death sentence, including the subtle influence of the ongoing moratorium on executions and the continuing statewide debate on the death penalty in Illinois.

Some said recent reforms are slowing the pace at which pending capital cases move through the system, while others pointed out that circumstances didn't line up for one case to cry out for the ultimate penalty.

Statewide, two men were sentenced to death last year.

"Maybe it's taken a year to see where we're going," said Kevin Smith, a supervisor in the homicide task force of the Cook County public defender's office.

"It will be interesting to see if we have a change of attitudes over the next couple of years," he said. "Especially as juries handle cases--there certainly are more people aware of innocent people being sentenced to death because of flaws in the system."
A few observers suggested that chance played a role at Chicago's Criminal Courts Building.

"You don't know," said Judge James Schreier, who last year sentenced a man convicted of murdering three women to life in prison instead of to death. "We could see three in February."

Typically several defendants are sentenced to death in Cook County each year: County judges or juries have sent 153 people to Death Row since capital punishment was reinstated in Illinois in 1977. That figure, compiled by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, includes all death sentences, including those successfully remanded by higher courts.

In each of the past several years, county prosecutors have filed notices of their intent to seek capital punishment in between 30 and 50 cases, said Jane Bohman of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and the number was expected to be in the same range for 2003.

Prosecutors declined to provide an exact number of cases in which they sought the death penalty last year or any previous year, but a spokesman agreed 2003 was normal in terms of the number of times prosecutors filed notice of their intent to seek capital punishment.

Stephen Richards, a lawyer in the Death Penalty Trial Assistance Office of the state appellate defender, filed motions in several capital cases in the state in 2003, including that of Juan Luna, one of two defendants charged in the Brown's Chicken massacre. He said prosecutors appear to be pursuing capital punishment at the typical rate.

"As far as prosecutors, I've seen no evidence of any influence in terms of how often or how seriously they seek the death penalty," Richards said. "Many seem to seek it on any case they think is eligible."

According to statistics compiled by the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, there are at least 200 pending death penalty cases across the state, including some 170 in Cook County.

Prosecutors said the review committee in their office that considers the decision to seek the death penalty is not influenced by the politics of the issue. The circumstances and eligibility factors in each case are weighed before a determination is made on whether to pursue capital punishment, prosecutors said, just as they were before Ryan's clemency decision and before the moratorium was put in place in January 2000.

Bernie Murray, chief of criminal prosecutions in the office, said that if anything, the public hearings on the clemency issue "reinvigorated" prosecutors' view that some people deserve the death penalty and it should remain a viable option. Those hearings in fall 2002 led to Ryan's January 2003 decision to commute 167 death sentences to life in prison or a term of years. He also pardoned four condemned men.

To prosecutors, new Illinois Supreme Court rules allowing the defense broader use of pre-trial depositions in capital cases and more access to experts are having the most impact. Fewer cases may have ended at a sentencing stage last year because of the new rules, they said.

"The big effect is it slows cases down," said First Assistant Cook County State's Atty. Robert Milan. "It takes much longer to even get to trial."

Smith and Richards said they believe such reforms will have a pronounced influence over time.

"What we may see is that the death penalty is sought more judiciously and that it is reserved for cases where it is a truly appropriate option--and not just a technical option," Smith said.

The two death sentences handed down in Illinois last year were in Coles County and Stark County. Anthony Mertz, 26, is on Death Row at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet for raping and killing Eastern Illinois University student Shannon McNamara of Rolling Meadows. A Stark County judge sentenced Curtis Thompson, 61, to death for the 2002 shotgun murders of two neighbors and a sheriff's deputy.

Chicago's main courthouse has not seen a single death sentence since Andrew Urdiales was sent to Death Row in September 2002 for killing two women and dumping their bodies in Wolf Lake in 1996.

"What we may be seeing here is the visceral support for the death penalty has begun to erode as people have learned more about it, and have seen it in practice" said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University. "Especially it hasn't been lost on judges and juries--there's been more circumspection."

Warden said he believes the current state of the death penalty may be weighing on judges.

"We've basically got de facto abolition here," Warden said. "There is a moratorium on executions, and Death Row has been emptied."

It's been five years since anyone in Illinois was executed, he said, and it's likely to be several years before anyone again faces that fate. One provision of the death penalty reform package signed into law last year calls for the formation of a capital punishment reform study committee, he said, a body that would have to do its work before anyone else would face the death penalty.

In fact, it's debatable whether anyone in Illinois will ever be executed, Warden said.
"The theory is it will slip into disuse, and then be all the easier to abolish," he said.
Some Criminal Courts judges who spoke privately said the state of the death penalty could subtly be influencing cases.

But when others were questioned about specific cases they handled, judges said that new reforms, Ryan's decision to empty Death Row and other outside circumstances had not factored into their choices.

"With the moratorium it seems everybody is wondering if anybody in the state in the next several years will actually be put to death," Judge Schreier said. "But I would like to think any judge would view it objectively and not really entertain that notion as they make a decision."

Schreier said he carefully considered the case of Ronald Macon Jr. before sentencing him this fall to three life terms in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

Macon, 39, was convicted of killing three women in separate incidents in Englewood in 1999. He had made a blind plea of guilty in the case, meaning he admitted culpability even though he didn't know what sentence he would face, Schreier noted, and he made remorseful remarks in court.

Macon was a drug addict who was HIV-positive and had suffered through a terrible childhood, the judge said.

Schreier said he ultimately expects the recent reforms will reduce the number of cases in which the state pursues the death penalty.

In April, Judge Marjorie Laws considered the sentence of Ralph Andrews, convicted twice of raping and eviscerating teenage girls in the 1970s. Laws called Andrews "vicious and despicable" but did not put him on Death Row.

Andrews also entered a blind plea of guilty.

"Some will die in peace, but I'm not going to be the one to say whether you will or you won't," the judge said at the time.

Last month she said she does not believe the current circumstances surrounding capital punishment in Illinois have influenced her colleagues, and she said it did not have an effect on her in the Andrews case.

"We take it case-by-case and just try to follow the law," Laws said. "I made the decision [on Ralph Andrews] and I can sleep at night."

Killing a police officer often earns a death sentence, and even though two of those cases went through the county court system in 2003, neither resulted in such a decision.
Kevin Dean was convicted this summer of disarming Chicago Police Officer James Camp in 1999 but was acquitted of murdering the officer as they struggled for the gun. Dean was sentenced to 60 years in prison by Judge Henry Simmons.

In September, a jury found Hector Delgado guilty of first-degree murder in the 2001 slaying of Chicago Police Officer Brian Strouse. But Delgado, 19, was too young at the time of the slaying to be eligible for capital punishment, and Judge Thomas Sumner sentenced him to the mandatory life term.

Two murders of police officers will take center stage at the Criminal Courts Building as this year begins.

On Monday, jury selection is to begin in the courtroom of Judge Clayton Crane for the trial of James Scott in the 1999 killing of Chicago Police Officer John Knight. A week later, Judge John Moran will oversee jury selection for the trial of Aloysius Oliver in the slaying of Chicago Police Officer Eric Lee in 2001.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in both cases.

Illinois death sentences curbed

Note: Figures are for death sentences handed down since 1977 to prisoners who were executed, pardoned, exonerated or given clemency.

For the first time in a quarter-century, Cook County judges did not hand down a death sentence in 2003. Statewide, only two convicts received the death penalty, the second-lowest number since Illinois reinstated the death penalty in 1977.

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