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Statement of the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Click here to download statement June 20, 2005 For nearly eight months Kevin Fox sat in the Will County Jail under $25 million bond, facing a possible death penalty in the murder of his three-year-old daughter Riley. On Friday he went free, after DNA testing excluded him as a suspect in the crime. The Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty joins his family and supporters in celebrating Fox's release. However, we are also disturbed by what Kevin Fox's ordeal says about the state of criminal justice in Illinois and the prospects for reforming this state's scandal-plagued death penalty system. Fox's arrest last October came after a fourteen-hour interrogation that resulted in a videotaped "confession" which has now been discredited. According to the federal civil rights suit filed after his arrest, he was denied a lawyer and lied to about the evidence against him. He was warned that detectives would see to it he was sexually assaulted at the jail if he did not confess. Finally, he was offered the false hope of release on bond and a light sentence if he would confess to a version of the murder laid out for him by detectives. The decision to seek the death penalty was made by then-State's Attorney Jeff Tomczak one day after Fox's arrest. It came less than a week before the November election in which Tomczak, an outspoken death penalty supporter, faced a close race complicated by a campaign funding scandal and by frustration over the lack of an arrest in Riley's murder. DNA evidence from both Riley Fox and her father had been at the FBI's labs since her murder in June 2004, but was not tested. At best, the Will County state's attorney's office dropped the ball; at worst, as Fox's attorney has asserted, it may have told the FBI lab to stop the planned testing. Had Fox not had the support of a nationally-known private defense team and a dedicated group of family and friends, he might well still be in jail. After five years of a death penalty moratorium, and a decade of exposes of wrongful convictions, it is simply not credible to claim that police and prosecutors were unaware of the potential for lethal injustice. What this case reveals is a law enforcement system that stubbornly resists learning from its errors - and that is all too prone to the use of high profile criminal cases for political advantage at the expense of justice. No reform enacted to date has proven capable of reforming it. It is not a system that should be entrusted with the power of life and death. Illinois faces a long hard road to reform of its criminal justice system. The first step in that reform should be abolition of the death penalty. Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty 180 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 2300 Chicago, IL 60601 Phone: (312) 849-2279; One the web: www.icadp.org |
