Death penalty gets no boost from Brown's

By Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune

May 17, 2007

The 1993 massacre at a Brown's Chicken restaurant in Palatine is exactly the sort of crime that reminds many people why we should have the death penalty.

Seven workers were slaughtered with heartless efficiency by well-armed robbers. Seven lives were cut tragically, needlessly short in a single act of depravity unmatched in this area since Richard Speck murdered eight student nurses in 1966.

And the guilt of Juan Luna, 33, who was convicted in Cook County Criminal Court May 10 for his role in the murders, does not appear to be in serious doubt.

Ordinarily, such circumstances would have prompted foes of capital punishment to lie low during this week's sentencing hearing and wait for the emotions to subside before renewing their attack on the systemic flaws of capital justice.

"The big cases are usually the hardest for us," said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, reminiscing with me about the wildly popular execution of serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1994.

But Luna's sentencing this week is raising an additional set of emotions-confusion and uneasiness along with rage-that may remind people why we shouldn't have the death penalty.

One difference here is that family members of   four of the seven victims have announced their opposition to sentencing Luna to death.

"Blood for blood is not the right answer," a sister of victim Michael Castro told onlookers at an extraordinary joint news conference with members of Luna's family Tuesday morning outside the courthouse at 26th Street and California Avenue. "Violence does not end violence.

"In the spirit of the woman who raised us, we have decided not to be consumed by hate or vengeance," a daughter of victims Lynn and Richard Ehlenfeldt told jurors Wednesday morning during a brave and angry victim-impact statement.

I have a warning for those who think these sentiments deserve strong consideration by prosecutors, the jury or even the public:

This inclination toward mercy is rare. Most family members of murder victims favor the death penalty and would probably favor years of excruciating torture leading up to it. Giving them an official say-so about the appropriate punishment would result in more death sentences, not fewer.

Nevertheless, the split among the survivors reminds us that mercy and a distaste for blood vengeance are not just intellectual abstractions promoted by all-purpose hand-wringers.

As the group Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation has long been telling us, those who have felt the searing pain of losing a loved one to violence can find peace outside the cycle of death in some cases.

Another difference here is that Luna had a chance-wholly undeserved-to become a respectable adult in the more than nine years between his crime and his arrest: He was a married father with a full-time job as an appliance installer by the time police caught up to him five years ago.

Therefore jurors have been able to hear defense evidence this week saying, in effect, that however monstrously Luna acted at 18 when he and his alleged partner James Degorski went to that restaurant at closing time, he didn't grow into a monster and isn't a monster today.

The monster he was is already dead. There's no need to kill it.

One last difference that's causing foes of capital punishment to shine the light on this case:

On paper, it's a slam dunk for death. Such a slam dunk, in fact, that if somehow the jury spares Luna's life, it will dramatically underscore the complaint that death sentences are handed out arbitrarily.

If we don't try to execute someone responsible for seven murders, the argument will go, how in good conscience and in the name of justice can we try to execute someone responsible for one, two or three murders?

Either way, the answer is we can't. We shouldn't.

If the Ehlenfeldts and Castros can see their way past this wretched, broken system, so can the rest of us.