Plea agreement elimates lengthy trial

By Jan Dennis, Associated Press, July 2006

PEORIA, Ill. - A plea agreement eliminated a lengthy trial that could have doubled legal costs for a confessed serial killer sent to prison for life last month rather than to death row in the slayings of eight Peoria-area women, officials said Wednesday.

A state trust fund for death penalty cases has paid out $221,515 in legal costs for 39-year-old Larry Bright, who prosecutors say burned half his victims to ash and bone and dumped the others along little-traveled roads during a 15-month killing spree in 2003 and 2004.

Typically, the state pays $500,000 to $700,000 for each potential death penalty case, said John Hoffman, spokesman for the state treasurer's office, which administers the fund created in 2000 to make sure both prosecutors and defenders have sufficient resources.

"Everybody wins because there wasn't a trial required, there's not going to be any appeals and, as you know, that's when it gets very pricey," said Hugh Toner, one of Bright's court-appointed attorneys.

Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons says money wasn't a factor in the deal with Bright, who is serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty May 30 to seven counts of first-degree murder and one count of drug-induced homicide.

"It's just obscene that I would even comment on where I think our case would fit into the state average because I can't get by how outrageous and nutty the state average is ... The figures tell me that whenever the state is paying, the case will be milked like a cow," Lyons said.

But Lyons credited Bright's lawyers for pursuing the plea agreement, saying the pot of state money encourages defense attorneys to string cases out rather than resolve them.

Requiring the former concrete worker to publicly admit the killings provided closure for victims' families, said Lyons, an outspoken critic when former Gov. George Ryan emptied Illinois' death row in 2003.

Though Bright earlier confessed to all eight killings, he had been charged in only three because DNA tests failed to identify charred remains recovered by investigators. Bright, who is white, was arrested in late 2004 by a task force investigating the deaths and disappearances of black women who all led lives that included drugs and prostitution.

Defense attorney Jay Elmore agreed that some attorneys have abused the state fund, which paid out a high of $2.3 million for the 2004 retrial of a man now on death row for killing a 10-year-old girl in southern Illinois. But he said the state has added new safeguards, such as requiring defense attorneys to submit budgets for pending cases.

Elmore called Bright's plea agreement "a good resolution to a very, very difficult case," saying it gave families closure while handing out what effectively is Illinois' most severe punishment as a moratorium continues over executions in the state.

"You're locked up some 20 hours a day for the rest of your life and you're guaranteed to come out in a wooden box," Elmore said.

Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, praised the plea agreement, calling it a "better alternative."

She said defense attorneys alone tapped the state fund for more than $1 million this year for the trial of a man charged with the 2003 drownings of his then-girlfriend's three children in Clinton Lake. A jury convicted Maurice LaGrone Jr., but ruled he was ineligible for the death penalty.

"In this era of scarce resources for crime fighting and other needs, the death penalty is simply an avenue we cannot continue to pursue," Bohman said. "We can't continue to use these resources simply to seek revenge."