Death Penalty

In 1993, Gary Gaugher called McHenry County police after seeing his parents’ dead bodies, according to a PBS newscast. After an interview with law enforcement officials, they claimed that they had received a confession from him, but it was not recorded and Gaugher denied it. He was arrested and put on trial for two counts of murder. Physical evidence found was inconclusive. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although he continued to claim his innocence. On an appeal, it was reduced to life in prison. Gaugher was eventually granted a retrial on the grounds that there was no evidence of his confession. He was released from prison after three years. Two men later were later arrested for the murders and convicted based on their own confessions and DNA evidence. According to the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions, Gaugher said at his release, “Until this, I really believed in the criminal justice system”.
Gaugher was one of thirteen men in Illinois released from death row because of innocence between when the United States reinstated the death penalty in 1972 and 2000. In response to the potential deaths of these innocent men, Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000. The 167 people that were on the death row then were given life sentences in prison, according to the Chicago Tribune. He called for a review on the death penalty before it could be reinstated. In a speech, Ryan stated that “Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?” The moratorium is still in effect, and no one has been executed in ten years.
On March 9, 2011, Governor Pat Quinn signed a bill ending the death penalty in Illinois. He also commuted the fifteen people on death row to life in prison. Illinois is now one of fifteen states and the District of Columbia that does not have the death penalty, according to Amnesty International. However, one member of the state senate and a member of the state house are already calling for reinstatement, according to the Chicago Tribune. They have introduced a bill that the death penalty should be allowed for the murder of a police officer, firefighter or trial witness, and also for multiple murders or torture.
Some people feel the death penalty is necessary to deter crime and to help the families of victims. However, George Ryan said when he declared the moratorium, “Yet if I did not take this action, I feared that there would be no comprehensive and thorough inquiry into the guilt of the individuals on death row or of the fairness of the sentences applied.... Abraham Lincoln said, ‘I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.’ I can only hope that will be so.” The state cannot bring back a murder victim by killing the murderer. Gandhi is attributed to saying, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind”.
The death penalty is a final act that cannot be undone if innocence is found. Our justice system is imperfect and errors are made. As humans, we can never have a perfect system, so we should not practice irreversible killing. When Jesus saw the women in adultery that was about to be executed, he did not support it. He said, “Let he who is without sin among you cast the first stone” (John 8:7).