The Illinois death penalty experience, Furman v. Georgia to the present
June 29, 1972: The U.S. Supreme Court voids all state capital punishment laws, holding that the death penalty had been inflicted in a haphazard and racially discriminatory manner. Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). In Illinois, the decision spares the life of Richard Speck.
November 8, 1973: Governor Dan Walker signs a new Illinois death penalty law into effect, ostensibly correcting the problems identified in Furman. The new Illinois law, which was supported by recently elected Representative George H. Ryan, of Kankakee, provides that three-judge panels be convened at the trial court level to sentence defendants for whom prosecutors seek the death penalty. The law also requires appellate courts to determine whether there was racial discrimination in sentencing.
September 29, 1975: The Illinois Supreme Court voids the 1973 death penalty law, holding that the General Assembly lacked constitutional authority to create a three-judge trial court. People ex rel. Rice v. Cunningham, 61 Ill. 2d 353 (1975).
June 21, 1977: A revised Illinois death penalty statute goes into effect, providing for a bifurcated sentencing procedure involving only one trial judge. It provides the death penalty for murder of a police officer or firefighter, murder of a corrections employee or prisoner, multiple murder, murder in the course of a hijacking, contract murder, murder of a witness, and murder in the course of a felony. Among supporters is Representative George Ryan, Republican of Kankakee.
November 21, 1979: The Illinois Supreme Court upholds the most recent Illinois death penalty statute by a four-to-three vote, with the dissenters arguing that the statute is unconstitutional because it contains no guidelines to prevent the arbitrary exercise of discretion by prosecutors. People ex rel. Carey v. Cousins, 77 Ill. 2d 531 (1979).
March 13, 1980: John Wayne Gacy is sentenced to death after his conviction by a Cook County Circuit Court jury for the murders of 33 young men and boys.
November 4, 1980: Cook County voters elect Seymour Simon, a death penalty opponent, to the Illinois Supreme Court. He replaces Justice Thomas E. Kluczynski, a member of the majority in Carey v. Cousins..
July 1, 1982: An amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making the murder of a child under 12 a capital crime if the murder results from "exceptionally brutal or heinous behavior indicative of wanton cruelty." Among the amendment’s backers is House Speaker George Ryan.
September 8, 1983: Illinois abandons the electric chair in favor of death by lethal injection.
November 30, 1984: The three justices who had comprised the minority in Carey v. Cousins flip on the death penalty issue. The Supreme Court reaffirms the constitutionality of the 1977 statute, with only Justice Simon dissenting. People v. Lewis, 105 Ill. 2d 226 (1984).
January 21, 1987: Darby Tillis and Perry Cobb of Chicago are acquitted after new evidence discredits the prosecution witness whose testimony sent them to death row for a double murder they did not commit. They are the first Illinois death row prisoners exonerated since the General Assembly reinstated capital punishment in 1977.
June 26, 1989:The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously holds that executing the mentally retarded is not cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment. Penry v. Lynaugh, 492 U.S. 302 (1989).
August 14, 1989: The forensic DNA age dawns when the emerging technology establishes that Gary Dotson did not commit the rape of which he had been convicted a decade earlier in Cook County. The conviction had been based on a story fabricated by his supposed victim, Cathleen Crowell, and false forensic testimony that appeared incriminating.
August 17, 1989: Protesters accuse Chicago Police Area 2 Commander Jon Burge and detectives under his supervision of torturing prisoners to obtain confessions, some of which have led to death sentences. The torture methods are said to include electric shock to the ears and testicles, Russian roulette, suffocation with typewriter covers, and beatings.
September 1, 1989: An amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making premeditated murder a capital crime.
January 1, 1990: An amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making a murder committed in connection with a drug conspiracy a capital crime.
September 12, 1990: Charles Walker dies by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center after abandoning his appeals. His was the first execution in Illinois since James Dukes went to his death in the Cook County electric chair in 1962. Walker had been sentenced to death for the 1983 murders of a young couple in St. Clair County.
January 1, 1992: An amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making it a capital crime for an incarcerated person to murder or cause anyone to be murdered.
February 24, 1993: A secret Chicago police internal report surfaces cataloging more than 50 instances of “methodical” and “systematic” torture by Jon Burge and Area 2 detectives from 1973 to 1986. Specific officers were identified in 35 incidents, and Burge was named in more than half of those. The report had been prepared in 1990 by Michael Goldston, an Office of Professional Standards investigator, but suppressed by police officials.
June 28, 1993: In Maryland, former Marine Kirk Bloodsworth becomes the first American under sentence of death to be exonerated by DNA.
January 1, 1994: Amendments to the death penalty statute go into effect making it a capital crime for anyone to use torture during a murder or for a drug kingpin or head of an organized drug conspiracy to murder or cause anyone to be murdered.
May 10, 1994: John Wayne Gacy dies by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center, 17 years after the death penalty was reinstated in Illinois. The state’s new $24,900 lethal injection machine malfunctions, delaying Gacy’s death about 10 minutes.
September 8, 1994: Joseph Burrows becomes the state’s third exonerated death row prisoner after the prosecution’s star witness admits that she alone committed the murder for which he had been sentenced to death in Iroquois County.
March 22, 1995: Illinois carries out its first double execution in four decades. James Free, of DuPage County, and Hernando Williams, of Cook County, die an hour apart at Stateville Correctional Center. The lethal drugs are administered by an executioner hired after the state junked the lethal injection machine that malfunctioned during the Gacy execution.
May 17, 1995: Girvies Davis dies by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center, after Governor Jim Edgar denies clemency despite evidence developed by Northwestern University journalism students that he might have been innocent of the murder for which he had been sentenced to death in St. Clair County.
July 1, 1995: An amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making drive-by murder a capital crime.
September 20, 1995: Charles Albanese is executed for the murders of three relatives in Lake and McHenry counties. He leaves a note saying, in part, “By the time you have read this you will have executed an innocent man. . . . Not only have you killed an innocent man, you have destroyed my family, all I have worked for in life, and allowed someone to get away with murder.”
November 3, 1995: Rolando Cruz becomes the state’s fourth exonerated death row prisoner, winning a directed verdict of acquittal at his third trial for the murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County. The acquittal is based on DNA results and a stunning admission by a sheriff’s officer that he lied when he testified at two previous trials that Cruz had made an incriminating statement about the crime.
December 8, 1995: Alejandro Hernandez, co-defendant of Cruz, becomes the fifth death row prisoner to be officially exonerated.
January 16, 1996: Guinevere Garcia is 14 hours away from becoming the first woman to be executed in 57 years in Illinois when, over her objection, Governor Edgar commutes her death sentence to life in prison without parole. She had been convicted of murdering her husband in 1992, and was eligible for the death penalty because she had been convicted of murdering her 11-month-old daughter 15 years before. Bianca Jagger had crusaded for Garcia's clemency.
June 24, 1996: Verneal Jimerson, one of two men sentenced to death in the so-called Ford Heights Four case, becomes the state’s sixth exonerated death row prisoner when his innocence is established by DNA results and the confessions of two men involved in the crime.
July 2, 1996: Dennis Williams, the other man sentenced to death in the Ford Heights Four case, becomes the state’s seventh exonerated death row prisoner. Exonerated at the same time are co-defendants Kenneth Adams and Willie Rainge, who had not been under death sentence.
October 4, 1996: Gary Gauger becomes the state’s eighth exonerated death row prisoner when the Illinois Appellate Court holds that police lacked probable cause to arrest him for murdering his parents in McHenry County.
December 4, 1996: The General Assembly approves the "Bianca Jagger law," a measure intended to prevent clemency efforts by outsiders on behalf of death row prisoners who refuse to sign their own clemency petitions.
December 12, 1996: Carl E. Lawson becomes the state’s ninth exonerated death row prisoner when forensic testing discredits the prosecution theory of the crime for which he had been sentenced to death in St. Clair County.
February 3, 1997: The American Bar Association calls for a nationwide moratorium on executions until new policies are implemented to assure that “death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially, in accordance with due process, and minimize the risk that innocent persons may be executed.”
June 10, 1997: A federal grand jury in Milwaukee indicts James W. “Preacher” Schneider and Randall E. “Madman” Miller, members of a Wisconsin motorcycle gang known as the Outlaws, for racketeering involving “an incredible series of barbaric acts,” including the murders for which Gary Gauger had been sentenced to death in Illinois.
January 1, 1998: Amendments to the death penalty statute go into effect making capital crimes of any "exceptionally brutal" murder of a person over age 60 and of any person whom the killer knows to be physically or mentally disabled.
September 4, 1998: The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office drops charges against two boys, ages 7 and 8, who had confessed to police that they murdered 11-year-old Ryan Harris in Chicago the previous month. Semen, which could not have come from the pre-pubescent defendants, was found on the victim’s underwear.
November 13-15, 1998: Twenty-eight exonerated former death prisoners and 1,200 lawyers, academics, and activists come together for the National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty at the Northwestern University School of Law. The event draws international media attention for the first time to systemic flaws in the US criminal justice system.
January 1, 1999: Amendments to the death penalty statute go into effect making it a capital crime to murder a community policing volunteer or to murder anyone in violation of an order of protection.
January 10-14, 1999: The Chicago Tribune publishes a five-part series entitled “Trial & Error/How Prosecutors Sacrifice Justice to Win” documenting hundreds of examples of prosecutorial misconduct in Cook County and exposing how prosecutors’ illegal and unethical practices have been tacitly encouraged by job promotions for some of the worst offenders.
February 5, 1999: Anthony Porter, who had come within 48 hours of execution, becomes the state’s tenth exonerated death row prisoner following the confession of the man who committed the double murder for which Porter had been sentenced to death.
February 19, 1999: Steven Smith becomes the state’s eleventh exonerated death row prisoner when the Illinois Supreme Court reverses his conviction outright. The Supreme Court bars a retrial, holding that the prosecution witness who put Smith on death row for the murder of an off-duty prison guard in Chicago was unworthy of belief.
March 16, 1999: The Cook County Board approves a $36 million settlement of civil claims arising from the Ford Heights Four case. It is the largest civil rights settlement in US history.
March 17, 1999: Andrew Kokoraleis, of DuPage County, dies by lethal injection at the Tamms Correctional Center after Ryan denies Kokoraleis’s final bid for clemency on the eve of the execution. “I must admit that it is very difficult to hold in your hands the life of any person, even a person who, in the eyes of the many, has acted so horrendously as to have forfeited any right to any consideration of mercy,” said the Governor. “I have struggled with this issue of the death penalty and still feel that some crimes are so horrendous and so heinous that society has a right to demand the ultimate penalty.”
March 31, 1999: Lawyers for the Ford Heights Four file a petition asking Presiding Judge Thomas R. Fitzgerald, of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court, to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate possible criminal charges against sheriff's officers and former prosecutors involved in the case. State's Attorney Richard A. Devine opposes the request.
April 6, 1999: The Cook County Board approves State's Attorney Devine 's request to hire Gino L. DiVito, a former top assistant state's attorney and Illinois appellate judge, to investigate the Ford Heights Four miscarriage of justice for $185.00 an hour.
April 27, 1999: Judge Fitzgerald denies the Ford Heights Four attorneys' request for a special prosecutor.
May 17, 1999: Ronald Jones becomes the state’s twelfth exonerated death row prisoner when DNA proves that someone else’s semen had been recovered from the woman Jones was sentenced to death for raping and murdering in Chicago. Jones had been convicted based on a confession that he said from the beginning police had beaten out of him.
November 14-19, 1999: The Chicago Tribune publishes a series entitled “The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois.” The series exposes how Illinois prosecutors used dubious jailhouse informant testimony to send 46 defendants to death row, how torture, unreliable forensic evidence, and racial discrimination had been used in other cases, and how 33 death row prisoners had been represented by attorneys who had been, or would be, disbarred or suspended from the practice of law.
January 18, 2000: Steve Manning, a former Chicago police officer who was convicted and sentenced to death solely on the word of a jailhouse informant with a long history of lying, becomes the state’s thirteenth exonerated death row prisoner when charges are dismissed after the Illinois Supreme Court reverses his conviction.
January 24, 2000: The Chicago Tribune reports that Gino DiVito "has yet to produce a report of his findings, and many of the most prominent players in the case say DiVito has not interviewed them." To date, DiVito has been paid $47,000 for the case.
January 30, 2000: Governor Ryan imposes a moratorium on executions in Illinois, declaring: “Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.”
February 16, 2000: In a letter published in the Chicago Tribune, Gino DiVito says he is working diligently on the Ford Heights Four investigation. "I am doing my utmost to determine what happened in May 1978, when these terrible murders occurred and when the series of events that led to the convictions of four innocent men began," says DiVito. "I am doing my best, too, to determine why those things happened in 1978, and what occurred in the 20-plus years since then and why they occurred."
March 7, 2000: A Chicago Tribune poll shows that support for the death penalty among Illinois voters has declined to 58% from 63% a year earlier and from 76% in 1994. When respondents were asked whether murder should be punished by the death penalty or by life in prison without of parole, 43% favored the death penalty and 41% life without parole.
March 9, 2000: Governor Ryan announces the appointment of a 14-member Commission on Capital Punishment to study flaws in the administration of the Illinois death penalty and recommend reform. The panel is diversified but weighted in favor of current and former prosecutors who favor the death penalty.
July 29-30, 2000: In view of Governor Ryan's moratorium on executions, a group of Illinois lawyers involved in death penalty appeals attending a conference at Airlie House, in Warrenton, Virginia, discuss the possibility of seeking blanket clemency for all death row prisoners.
October 14, 2000: A federal judge in Milwaukee sentences Randall E. “Madman” Miller to life in prison for a racketeering scheme that including the murder of Gary Gauger’s parents, the crime for which Gauger had been sentenced to death in Illinois.
January 1, 2001: The Capital Litigation Trust Fund is established, providing funding for defense attorneys to pay investigative costs and hire independent forensic experts in capital cases.
January 19, 2001: Darrell Cannon, whose conviction and death sentence for a 1983 drug-related murder were overturned by the Illinois Supreme Court, accepts a deal offered by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office under which he will be eligible for release from prison in July 2003 in exchange for abandoning a claim that he was tortured by detectives working under Jon Burge.
March 9, 2001: James W. “Preacher” Schneider is sentenced to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty in Milwaukee to federal racketeering charges, including the Gauger murders in Illinois. “I hate the thing I’ve become, your honor,” Schneider told the judge. “I hate the way I acted and all the pain I caused.”
May 2, 2001: The Center on Wrongful Convictions releases a report showing that mistaken or perjured eyewitness identification testimony had been responsible in whole or part for sending 46 innocent Americans on death row.
June 29, 2001: At the annual death penalty seminar of Office of the State Appellate Defender (OSAD) at DePaul University College of Law, lawyers handling capital appeals agree quietly to launch an effort to seek executive clemency on behalf of all Illinois death row prisoners.
July 27, 2001: The first organizational meeting of groups interested in pursuing blanket clemency for death row prisoners quietly convenes at the Chicago office of OSAD's Capital Litigation Division (CLD).
September 27, 2001: The Chicago Tribune discloses that Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine has offered deals under which death row prisoners in addition to Darrell Cannon could be released if they acknowledge guilt and abandon allegations that they were tortured by Jon Burge or officers under his command.
November 20, 2001: The first in a series of periodic strategy sessions on blanket clemency is held at the CLD office, and future sessions are scheduled at the Northwestern and Chicago Kent law schools.
December 16-19, 2001: The Chicago Tribune publishes a series entitled “Cops and Confessions,” exposing coerced, fabricated, and otherwise tainted confessions in 247 Cook County murder cases from 1991 to 2001.
January 1, 2002: An Amendment to the death penalty statute goes into effect making it a capital crime to murder an employee of a school.
January 4, 2002: Corenthian Bell, from whom Chicago police had coerced a confession that he killed his mother, was released from Cook County jail after DNA established his innocence. Bell had been held awaiting trial for 17 months. He had not faced the death penalty, but the case raises further concerns about false confessions.
February 8, 2002: Governor Ryan exercises his amendatory veto power to strike a death penalty provision from an anti-terrorism bill. Ryan's veto incorporates reform measures recommended by the Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment into the bill.
March 1, 2002: The Illinois Supreme Court puts new rules into effect for capital cases. They include minimum standards for defense lawyers, appointment of two defense lawyers for each case, special training for judges, and a pointed reminder for prosecutors that their duty is to seek justice, not win convictions.
March 2, 2002: Governor Ryan, after an appearance at the University of Oregon School of Law, tells reporters he would consider commuting all Illinois death sentences.
March 7, 2002: The Center on Wrongful Convictions releases a report showing that in the previous half century in Illinois, 15 innocent men, women, and children had been convicted of murder based on their own false confessions, and 11 othes based primarily on false confessions of codefendants.
April 15, 2002: The Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment issues its long-awaited report calling for sweeping reforms of the criminal justice system, including measures to reduce wrongful convictions based on false confessions, erroneous eyewitness identification testimony, junk science, and jailhouse snitches. A narrow majority of the 14-member panel concludes that the death penalty should be abolished.
April 24, 2002: Presiding Judge Paul Biebel, Jr., of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court, appoints a special prosecutor, former Illinois Appellate Court Judge Edward J. Egan, to investigate charges that Commander Jon Burge and his detectives engaged in systematic torture to obtain confessions from scores of men, eleven of whom remain under death sentence.
April 25, 2002: The Center on Wrongful Convictions releases a report entitled "The Snitch System” showing that false testimony by incentivized witnesses was instrumental in sending 38 innocent Americans to death row.
June 20, 2002: In a six-three opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that, since its 1989 decision in Penry v. Lynaugh, evolving standards of decency have rendered executing the mentally retarded cruel and unusual and therefore unconstitutional. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002).
June 24, 2002: The Daily Southtown reports that Gino DiVito promises a report soon on his investigation into possible wrongdoing by sheriff’s police and assistant state’s attorneys in the Ford Heights case. He has been paid $74,000 so far in the case, according to invoices obtained by the Southtown under the Freedom of Information Act.
August 22, 2002: Pope John Paul II, through the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America, asks Governor Ryan "to take another step in the defense of life by commuting all death sentences into life in prison without the possibility of parole."
September 9, 2002: The Chicago Sun-Times editorializes against blanket clemency, saying: “There are those who advocate releasing all defendants from death row because ‘the system is broken.’ That is a handy catch phrase but ignores the reality that each case must stand on its own facts.”
September 17, 2002: Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan seeks a writ of mandamus from the Illinois Supreme Court to bar Governor Ryan from granting executive clemency to any death row prisoners who refused to sign their clemency petitions and to prisoners who stood convicted of capital crimes but whose cases had been remanded for new trials or new sentencing hearings.
September 26, 2002: The DuPage County Board approves a $3.5 million settlement of civil claims arising from the wrongful convictions of Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez in the Nicarico case and the wrongful prosecution of a third defendant, Stephen Buckley, against whom charges were dismissed.
October 1, 2002: Special state counsels from the firm of Winston & Strawn, including former Governor James R. Thompson, file a Supreme Court brief on behalf of Governor Ryan arguing that Attorney General Ryan's mandamus effort is premised on a fundamental misunderstanding of the governor's constitutional powers to grant clemency.
October 11, 2002: The Supreme Court refuses to hear Jim Ryan’s mandamus petition.
October 13, 2002: With the Illinois Prisoner Review Board poised to begin an unprecedented series of clemency hearings for men and women on death row, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll finds Illinois voters almost evenly divided on the issue of blanket commutation, with 45.5% agreeing that it should be granted and 49.7% disagreeing. The difference is within the poll’s margin of error, making the outcome a statistical tie.
October 14-28, 2002: Clemency hearings are held for death row prisoners. Compelling testimony of murder victims’ family members draws massive media attention, overshadowing the system’s flaws.
October 22, 2002: Governor Ryan says he “has pretty much ruled out” granting clemency to everyone on death row in Illinois. “That doesn’t mean I won’t do it,” he says, “but I’ve pretty much decided that it’s not an option that I’m going to exercise.”
October 25, 2002: The Peoria Journal Star notes approvingly that Governor Ryan apparently has ruled out blanket clemency, adding that “we would hope these clemency hearings don’t boomerang into an anti-reform movement for the death penalty.”
October 26, 2002: The Bloomington Pantagraph editorializes that Governor Ryan should commute the sentences of prisoners “improperly sentenced to death,” but that “it should be done on a case-by-case basis, not as a blanket measure in opposition to Illinois’ death penalty procedures.”
October 29, 2002: The Chicago Tribune opposes blanket clemency, saying: “The hearings of recent days have exposed the mere notion of mass clemency as something that can be embraced only by those who flat-out oppose the death penalty.”
November 3, 2002: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports the results a new poll showing that opposition to blanket clemency among Illinois voters rose to 55.1% in the wake of the clemency hearings as support fell to 39.9%.
November 7, 2002: Playwright Arthur Miller urges Governor Ryan “to do whatever you can to prevent the state from killing any of its citizens.”
November 14, 2002: Speaking at the Northwestern University School of Law, Governor Ryan announces the pardon based on innocence of Paula Gray, whose coerced statement was instrumental in the convictions of the Ford Heights Four.
November 18, 2002: A letter signed by more than 650 Illinois lawyers calls for blanket clemency.
November 19, 2002: The Illinois House of Representatives overrides Governor Ryan’s amendatory veto of the anti-terrorism bill.
November 21, 2002: The New York Times supports blanket clemency, saying that “despite the bad publicity, Governor Ryan should do the right thing, and commute all the [death] sentences to life in prison.”
December 1, 2002: Twenty-one retired judges urge Governor Ryan to commute the sentences of all prisoners on death row or convicted of crimes in which the death penalty may be imposed. Among the judges is Richard J. Fitzgerald, the former presiding judge of the Criminal Division of the Cook County Circuit Court.
December 6, 2002: Governor Ryan holds the first of two meetings murder-victim survivors who urge him not to commute sentences in their loved one’s cases.
December 15, 2002: Thirty-seven prisoners exonerated and released from the nation’s death rows participate in the National Gathering of the Death Row Exonerated at Northwestern University School of Law and call for blanket clemency.
December 16, 2002: Those exonerated from death rows march from Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet to the Governor’s office in Chicago to present a letter calling for blanket clemency.
December 17, 2002: Forty-nine prominent persons from the entertainment industry, including Edward Asner, Diahann Carroll, Olympia Dukakis, Richard Dreyfuss, Morgan Fairchild, Mike Farrel, Jane Kaczmarek, Bradley Whitford, and Peter Yarrow, call for blanket clemency.
December 18, 2002: Four men wrongfully convicted of the 1997 torture murder of a furniture dealer in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood are freed. The four, Omar Aguirre, Edar Duarte Santos, Luis Ortiz, and Robert Gayol, were convicted on the basis of a coerced confession from Aguirre and false information provided by a police informant.
December 19, 2002: Speaking at the University of Illinois, Governor Ryan announces pardons based on innocence for Rolando Cruz, Gary Gauger, and Steven Linscott, a former Oak Park resident wrongfully convicted of murder in 1982. The governor says he is perplexed that survivors of murder victims sometimes feel entitled to have someone executed.
December 30, 2002: More than 400 law professors from around the country advise Governor Ryan that it would be proper for him to use the power of executive clemency to address the systemic flaws in the Illinois capital punishment system.
December 31, 2002: The League of Women Voters of Illinois urges Governor Ryan “to commute the sentences of all persons on death row to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.”
January 3, 2003: Governor Ryan meets with families of men and women on death row who plead for their loved ones' lives and Desmond M. Tutu, the Anglican archbishop emeritus of Cape Town, calls on Governor Ryan to spare the lives of all men and women "who live in the shadow of death" on death row in Illinois.
January 9, 2003: Governor Ryan signs pardon based on innocence for Gary Dotson, the man whose case heralded the dawning of the forensic DNA age.
January 10, 2003: Speaking at DePaul University College of Law, Governor Ryan announces pardons based on innocence for four death row prisoners whom he deemed victims of police torture — Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange, Aaron Patterson.
January 11, 2003: Governor Ryan, in an internationally televised event hosted by the Center on Wrongful Convictions at the Northwestern University School of Law, announces commutations of the sentences of 167 prisoners remaining on death row; four of the prisoners receive 40-year terms, the others life in prison without parole.
January 14, 2003: Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine brings an action in the Illinois Supreme Court challenging commutation for ten prisoners from Cook County whose death sentences had been overturned by the Supreme Court but could be reinstated by trial courts. If the action were to succeed, the sentences of six similarly situated prisoners from counties other than Cook also could be reinstated.
January 16, 2003: Richard Devine brings another Supreme Court action, this one challenging commutation for 13 prisoners from Cook County who did not sign their clemency petitions. If the action were to succeed, the sentences of nine similarly situated prisoners from other counties also could be reinstated.
February 4, 2003: Saying there are "legitimate legal issues that need to be resolved," Attorney General Lisa Madigan joins Divine and other state's attorneys in asking the Supreme Court to invalidate commutation for prisoners who either did not sign their petitions or whose death sentences had been overturned but could be reinstated. There are 21 prisoners in the first category and 16 in the second, but three prisoners fall into both categories, making the total 34.
February 5, 2003: DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett files a lawsuit asking the DuPage County Circuit Court to reinstate death sentences against all prisoners from that county whose sentences were among those commuted by Governor Ryan. There are nine such prisoners.
February 26, 2003: A jury in Coles County finds nothing in mitigation sufficient to preclude imposition of the death penalty against former Eastern Illinois University student Anthony Mertz for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Shannon McNamara in 2001.
