Jury in Ill. returns inmate to death row

By Eric Ferkenhoff, Globe Correspondent  | 

May 25, 2004

PONTIAC, Ill. -- A jury deliberated for an hour yesterday before sentencing Andrew Urdiales to death, making the former US Marine the state's first inmate to be sent back to death row after his first capital sentence was commuted in 2003 by Governor George Ryan.

The case will automatically be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

As Illinois continues its moratorium on executions, many state's attorneys are pressing ahead with capital cases. In the penalty phase of Urdiale's trial, prosecutors here spent two weeks detailing how Urdiales slashed and shot eight women in Illinois and California. If anyone deserves to die, they argued, it is the 39-year-old from Chicago.

''The evidence was overwhelming that he deserved the death penalty," said State's Attorney Tom Brown of Livingston County, who prosecuted the case. ''If he's not the type of person who deserved to get the death penalty, I'd be interested in knowing just what type should."

Ryan made headlines worldwide when he emptied death row last year, commuting the sentences of 167 inmates, having argued that the system was ''haunted by the demon of error."

Critics said it was a political move, designed to shore up a legacy tarnished by Ryan's indictment on federal corruption and bribery charges.

Urdiales is now the fifth person in Illinois to receive the death penalty since Ryan commuted all the sentences last year.

''There was this expectation that, all of a sudden, prosecutors would develop this great sense of restraint," following the 2000 moratorium, Ryan's blanket commutation, and a dramatic overhaul signed into law last fall, said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. ''And yet we are seeing aggressive pursuit of death penalty cases."

A survey of Illinois's 102 counties by Bohman's group nearly 200 pending cases in which local prosecutors have declared they will seek the death penalty, she said.

Four of those cases are in Will County, south of Chicago, where State's Attorney Jeff Tomczak, a Ryan critic, dismissed suggestions that prosecutors do not carefully consider imposing the death penalty. ''You can feel it in your heart when you decide to go death penalty," he said.

While prosecutors are not backing down from seeking the death penalty, Bohman said it appears that judges and juries, spooked by death row inmates being released when their convictions were found to be flawed, are much more hesitant to hand down the ultimate punishment.

When Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions in 2000, 13 death row inmates had been exonerated, igniting fierce debate in Illinois and touching off a round of legislative proposals to change the system.

Last fall, sweeping changes in state law required police to turn over field notes, altered lineup procedures, allowed greater scrutiny of jailhouse snitches, established an IQ floor for defendants to be considered for the death penalty, provided more DNA testing, and allowed the state Supreme Court to overturn death sentences.

Brown, the state's attorney prosecuting Urdiales, said that many of his colleagues welcomed such an overhaul as requiring more qualified defense attorneys and prosecutors, but that few believed the system was broken, as Ryan contended. And certainly, Brown said, none of the changes have made prosecutors reluctant to seek the death penalty. ''I don't believe we're any less inclined to seek the death penalty when we think the facts of the case merit that," he said. ''Any prosecutor worth his salt would want to know he convicted the right person."

Relying on the judgment of elected prosecutors is the problem, said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School.

''The system is certainly better than it was; there's no question," Warden said. ''And probably the reforms would make the criminal justice system in Illinois the fairest and most just anywhere in America. But are they adequate? I think any fair assessment would say clearly not. The capital justice system in America is simply, fundamentally too flawed."

Bernard Murray, chief of criminal prosecutions for the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, which includes Chicago, said it is Warden's reasoning that is flawed.

''We should just abolish the criminal justice system because we may convict an innocent person of jaywalking," Murray said mockingly. ''The evidence will never be good enough" for opponents, he said.