A Slow Death for the Death Penalty in Illinois?

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Since its reinstatement in the U.S. in 1977, the death penalty has remained one of the handful of soul-defining issues that can be reduced to a simple question: for or against? But in the 38 states that use capital punishment, ways to deal with flaws in its administration are not so cut-and-dried. Last Sunday, Illinois became the first state to address such problems by banning the measure — albeit temporarily — when Governor George Ryan announced an indefinite moratorium on executions pending an investigation into the state's justice system. The last straw came last week when, for the 13th time, the state overturned a conviction of a death row inmate, which means that Illinois has exonerated more death row inmates than it has executed since the death penalty was reinstated. That statistic, said Ryan, was too dramatic too ignore.

There were some other numbers worth noting — 33 inmates on Illinois' death row were represented at trial by lawyers who've since been disbarred or suspended, and a third of those sentenced to death row in the state in the past 23 years had their sentences reversed later. "This is a ringing indictment of the Supreme Court's inability to properly interpret and oversee the Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment," says TIME legal writer Alain Sanders. "While conservatives and liberals agree that those guilty of crimes need to be punished, the courts must hold to a higher scrutiny punishments that are irreversible, such as death."

Calls to repeal or revamp capital punishment have snowballed in the past few years (with much of the impetus coming from outside the U.S., which remains the only Western country with the death penalty). Opposition groups celebrated in 1987 when the Supreme Court agreed to hear McClesky v. Kemp, which questioned the constitutionality of executions in Georgia, where, the suit alleged, the death penalty was sought considerably more often in cases involving white victims than it was when the victims were black. The Court decided in favor of Georgia. Then last year the Nebraska legislature, concerned about what it saw as the overrepresentation of minorities on death row, voted in favor of a permanent moratorium. The vote was vetoed by Gov. Mike Johanns. And now Illinois. As the judicial and political wheels slowly turn in addressing the issues involved in capital punishment, only one thing is clear — we haven't heard the final word.