When Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation abolishing the death penalty on March 10 it commuted the sentences of 15 men on Death Row to life in prison without parole.
I believe in the death penalty. I believe that some crimes are just so heinous that justice demands it, and I feel for the families of the victims. Yet as I read Gov. Quinn’s reasoning and about the innocent men who were put to death, only to be later exonerated, I had second thoughts.
The reality is that innocent people have been executed in Illinois due to mistaken eyewitness testimony and false confessions. Prosecutors have also misrepresented evidence, which just isn’t fair.
The criminal justice system has stumbled one too many times to keep a state-sanctioned death penalty in act. The loved ones of the victims, who found solace in the knowledge that culprits had been sentenced to death, understandably do not find justice in a life sentence in prison alone.
But it’s cases like Jeanine Nicarico that illustrate the practical problems with the death penalty.
In the tragically memorable 1983 murder case, Aurora resident Rolando Cruz was sentenced to death for the murder of 10-year-old Naperville resident Jeanine Nicarico. Jeanine, who was home alone with the flu while her parents were at work and sisters were in school, was kidnapped in broad daylight, raped and beaten to death. Her body was found two days later.
The then 20-year-old Cruz was not a person of interest until he attempted to claim the $10,000 reward with a fabricated story on information about the murder. He spent 10 years on death row before being exonerated. DNA evidence has since proved that two other men were responsible for the crime. Cruz was released, and those two men were sentenced to death row instead.
The scariest thing is this: he’s not the only one. Since 1977, 13 men have been freed from death row, sometimes on the basis of DNA evidence that proved their innocence or because they were tortured—yes, tortured—until they confessed. How many innocent men were actually put to death? No one knows.
Cruz himself still favors the death penalty. “People owe it to the victims,” Cruz told the Daily Herald on Jan 12.
Jeanine’s father, Tom Nicarico, told CBS News he was “disgusted” his daughter’s real murderers will not be put to death, but he said he wasn’t surprised Quinn had signed the legislation. “I’ve lost the biggest fight of my life, even though I know executing the convict can still not bring my daughter’s life back,” Nicarico said.
I do believe those victims and their families, like the Nicaricos, deserve justice, but it’s not justice when innocent people are executed. The death penalty would be acceptable if the legal system could guarantee a fair trial, where the verdict is beyond all doubt. But a perfect justice system doesn’t exist here.
That’s why, even though I favor the death penalty in principle, I’m against the flawed way it’s been practiced in Illinois. Without a fairer and more accurate justice system, we shouldn’t be executing people.