[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 63 (Wednesday, April 30, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5532-S5533]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS IN ILLINOIS

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I want to take a moment to comment on 
Governor Rod Blagojevich's recent decision to continue the moratorium 
on executions in Illinois initiated by former Governor George Ryan. The 
leadership we have now seen from two successive Illinois Governors--one 
Republican and one Democrat--sends the right message for the Nation. 
This is not a partisan issue. All Americans who value fairness and 
justice can agree that executions should not take place--in Illinois or 
elsewhere in the Nation--under a flawed death penalty system, a system 
that risks executing the innocent.
  Three years ago, Governor Ryan, a death penalty supporter, made 
national headlines when he was the first Governor in the Nation to 
place a moratorium on executions. He did so after considering 
irrefutable evidence that the system in Illinois risks executing the 
innocent. Since the death penalty was reinstated in Illinois in 1977, 
Illinois had executed 12 people. But, during this same time, another 13 
death row inmates were found to be innocent and to have been wrongfully 
sentenced to death.
  Governor Ryan did not stop there. He created an independent, blue 
ribbon commission, including former U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, one 
of our former colleagues, Senator Paul Simon, and lawyer and novelist 
Scott Turow. He instructed the commission, composed of death penalty 
proponents and opponents, to review the State's death penalty system 
and to advise him on how to reduce the risk of executing the innocent 
and to ensure fairness in the system.
  After an exhaustive 2-year study, the commission issued a 
comprehensive report and set forth 85 recommendations for reform of the 
Illinois death penalty system. These recommendations address difficult 
issues like inadequate defense counsel, executions of the mentally 
retarded, coerced confessions, and the problem of wrongful convictions 
based solely on the testimony of a jailhouse snitch or a single 
eyewitness. The commission's work is the first and, so far, only 
comprehensive review of a death penalty system undertaken by a State or 
Federal Government in the modern death penalty era.
  Earlier this year, the Illinois legislature responded with a bill 
that included some of the recommendations of the commission. Governor 
Blagojevich, however, rightly reviewed the legislation and determined 
that the bill did not go far enough. And last week, he concluded that 
executions should not resume.
  But, the series of mistakes that led to a moratorium are not unique 
to Illinois. Death penalty systems across the country are fraught with 
errors and the risk that an innocent person may be condemned to die. 
There have been over 800 executions in the United States in the modern 
death penalty era. During that same period, 107 people who were 
sentenced to death were later exonerated. That means that for 
approximately every eight persons executed, an innocent person has been 
wrongly condemned to die.
  Evidence that race plays a role in who is sentenced to death 
continues to mount. A recent report on race and the death penalty 
released last week by Amnesty International tells us that while African 
Americans comprise 12 percent of the U.S. population, they are more 
than 40 percent of the current death row population and one in three of 
those executed since 1977. The U.S. could soon carry out the 300th 
execution of an African American inmate since executions resumed in 
1977. The report also highlighted that 80 percent of people executed in 
the modern death penalty era in the U.S. were executed for murders 
involving white victims, even though blacks and whites are murder 
victims in almost equal numbers in our society.
  We should all be startled by this statistic. There is something 
particularly insidious, particularly un-American about racial 
discrimination in the application of the death penalty. A system that 
treats people differently in administering the ultimate punishment 
based on their race or the race of the victim is immoral.
  In the face of these and other startling pieces of evidence that the 
death penalty is broken, our Nation is not, as it should be, ceasing or 
slowing the use of capital punishment. Instead, executions are being 
carried out at an alarming pace. Already this year, 28 people have been 
executed, and over the last 6 years, the average annual number of 
executions is well above that of previous years in the modern death 
penalty era. In 1999 alone, 99 people were executed in America.
  It is my hope that we do not break any records this year. With an 
eight-to-one executed-to-exonerated ratio, however, we are clearly in a 
race--a race against time. Because with 107 death row inmates 
exonerated to date, I do not think any American can be sure that an 
innocent person has not been executed in this country, and we most 
certainly cannot guarantee that it will never happen. We must suspend 
executions and study the flaws in the

[[Page S5533]]

death penalty system. I have introduced the National Death Penalty 
Moratorium Act, which would place a moratorium on Federal executions 
and call on the States to do the same, while an independent, blue 
ribbon commission conducts a thorough study of the flaws in the system.
  As public concern about the accuracy and fairness of the use of the 
death penalty deepens, I commend Governor Blagojevich for taking this 
opportunity to continue Illinois' commitment to justice and fairness.
  Governor Blagojevich did the right thing last week when he decided to 
continue the death penalty moratorium in Illinois. We in the Senate 
have a unique opportunity to look to the State of Illinois as a model 
for the Nation in ensuring fairness in the Federal death penalty 
system. I urge my colleagues to co-sponsor the National Death Penalty 
Moratorium Act.
  The time for a moratorium is now.

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