Death Penalty On Trial In Illinois

Nearly All State's Death Row Inmates Getting Clemency Hearings

(CBS)  Illinois' capital punishment system went on trial Tuesday in the first of nine days of clemency hearings for nearly every inmate on death row.

Illinois Prisoner Review Board member Victor Brooks opened one of the first of at least 140 clemency hearings with an apology to family members of victims for forcing them to "revisit the unwarranted carnage inflicted on their lives."

But at one of the first hearings, a family member left the packed room in tears. Emma Jean Burts lost three children in a fire that Leonard Kidd was convicted of setting. Kidd, 48, was convicted in the 1980 fire that killed Burts' children and seven others, as well as the 1984 stabbing deaths of four people.

There are 160 inmates on Illinois' death row.

Since declaring a moratorium on executions in Illinois because of flaws in the system, Gov. George Ryan has expressed reservations about capital punishment, and recently hinted he might issue a blanket commutation for all of the state's death row inmates before he leaves office in January.

If that's the case, said Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine, why go through the farce of hearings in each case? He called it unconscionable to put the victims' families through that.

"The emotional scab that is formed over the hearts of these wounded people has been ripped open," Devine said.

"This is unprecedented," Robert Dunne, a member of the review board, said before the hearings. "Normally we only hear petitions for clemency from death row inmates when their executions are imminent."

Ryan declared the moratorium on executions in January 2000, after 13 inmates were found to have been wrongfully convicted, including some found innocent.

Prosecutors concedes the law gives the governor broad authority in clemency matters, and they'd be powerless to stop a wholesale commutation by Ryan.

The state has executed 12 inmates since capital punishment resumed in 1977.

That moratorium and Ryan's decision not to run for re-election triggered a flood of clemency requests from death row inmates, who may never have a better chance to persuade a governor to spare their lives.

"They all chose to submit them so they can be heard before he goes out of office," Dunne said.

During Kidd's hearing, attorneys attacked the death penalty on two fronts. Attorneys said he is mentally retarded and that executing him constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And in an argument that is expected to be made several times, attorneys said Kidd was tortured by Chicago police detectives.

Lawyers also questioned the legitimacy of a system that has sent men to death row who were later exonerated.

"It has become apparent that our state's death penalty system is severely flawed," said lawyer Charles W. Hoffman in a hearing for Kenneth Allen, who pleaded guilty to the 1979 shooting deaths of two Chicago police officers.

Prisoner Review Board members in Chicago and Springfield will listen as defense lawyers, prosecutors, expert witnesses and victims' relatives argue for or against execution in what might be the most sweeping review in U.S. history.

"This is remarkably historic and without precedent," said David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "All eyes in the death penalty movement are on Illinois."

The board will make confidential recommendations, but any decision to commute sentences will be up to Ryan, a Republican.

The hearings are scheduled to last about an hour each.

Prosecutors have demanded that Ryan give each case individual consideration.

"Governor Ryan owes no less to the victims and their families to give this case-by-case consideration," Devine said Monday. "He owes no less to the citizens of this state. There should be no wholesale action taken by the governor."