Gov. Pat Quinn said his decision to abolish the death penalty in Illinois was driven by the need to eliminate any chance that an innocent person could be put to death.

The move was hailed by opponents of capital punishment as a watershed moment in reforming Illinois’ criminal justice laws, while panned by death penalty supporters as a mistake that takes an important deterrent to crime off the books.

But Quinn’s decision in March also may be having an unintended side effect: With the death penalty off the table, the public may perceive that problems within the criminal justice system have been fixed.

“One of my greatest concerns on the heels of passing the abolition of the death penalty was what effect it will have on the underlying problem that led to the wrongful convictions in those capital cases that provided the backdrop for having the abolition bill,” says state Sen. Kwame Raoul, a Chicago Democrat.

Raoul, who sponsored the death penalty abolition legislation, is referring to a key part of the vote-getting strategy needed to collect enough legislative support to get the abolition bill to the governor’s desk.

Among those who put a human face on the death penalty was Randy Steidl, himself a former Death Row inmate who spent 17 years behind bars — 12 on Death Row — after evidence was uncovered that proved him innocent in the murder of newlyweds Karen and Dyke Rhoads, whose bodies were discovered on July 6, 1986, in their burning home in Paris, Ill.

For anyone who believed Illinois still needed capital punishment, Steidl’s story was a chilling example designed to persuade them otherwise.

Raoul is not alone in his concern.

Rob Warden, executive director of the Northwestern University-based Center on Wrongful Convictions, says the combination of the end of the death penalty and the rise in DNA testing could give the public the mistaken belief that it is nearly impossible to send innocent people to jail.

But, says Warden, “there are still lots of problems.”

University of Illinois Springfield professor emeritus Larry Golden, who oversees the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, agrees. He says much of the attention given to cases his group has taken on have been death penalty cases.

“It raised the stakes to know that somebody was going to be executed,” Golden says. “There was a lot of attention paid to that. As a result, it took away attention from the bulk of innocence cases that aren’t death penalty cases.

“There was so much focus on the death penalty that a lot of people are under the impression that now that the death penalty has been abolished, the problem has been solved,” Golden says.

In August, Illinoisans received a timely reminder that all is not well in the state’s criminal justice system. A group of more than 60 current and former prosecutors, judges and lawmakers signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the Illinois Supreme Court asking for new hearings for 15 incarcerated men who say they were sent to prison by confessions they say were tortured out of them by convicted Chicago police Lt. Jon Burge and his officers. Burge, who has never faced direct charges for abuse, is the poster boy for the kind of police misconduct that has spawned the innocence project movement.

Although there are innocence projects throughout the country, Illinois holds the dubious title of leading the nation when it comes to exonerations based on DNA evidence. Since the first DNA-related exoneration in 1989, Illinois has seen 97 people set free because the evidence showed they didn’t commit the crime they were accused of.

At the University of Illinois Springfield, Golden launched the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project as part of a class on wrongful convictions.

The class’ first investigation involved the case of Keith Harris. Ballistic evidence developed a year after Harris was convicted showed that he couldn’t have committed the crime for which he was imprisoned. 

Yet, even with this proof, as well as a confession by the real perpetrator, Harris remained behind bars. Within months of launching the class, the students had helped exonerate Harris, allowing him to be a free man after two decades of incarceration.

Other investigations followed, including the 2008 release of Herb Whitlock, who had spent 22 years in prison in connection with the Rhoads murders.

Whitlock’s and Steidl’s convictions were based on shaky testimony of two alcoholics, as well as a jailhouse informant.

Similar success stories abound at the Center for Wrongful Convictions, which was formed in 1998 and is credited with the exoneration of 23 people, including Alan Beaman, a Rockford man who spent 14 years in prison after being convicted of murdering Illinois State University student Jennifer Lockmiller, despite a lack of evidence directly linking him to her death.

Both organizations have a full slate of cases under way.

The Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, for example, last year received a grant of nearly $700,000 — among the largest in UIS history — to help pay for DNA testing of 30 potentially innocent prisoners.

At Northwestern, Warden says the team has 50 cases on its hands.

“We’re full steam ahead,” he says.

Along with the moral problem of imprisoning innocent people, a recent report shows that the problem takes a toll on taxpayers.

In a study released in June, the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions tallied up the cost of incarceration, compensation paid to those who’ve been released and litigation costs in those cases to come up with a price tag for putting innocent people in prison. The total was $214 million, but it could grow to more than $300 million based on some of the preliminary work they’ve done on existing innocence cases.

Fresh from the success of getting the death penalty off the books, the two groups plan to continue pushing for legislative changes designed to ensure that innocent people aren’t sent to prison.

Warden says he hopes to persuade Illinois lawmakers to approve new eyewitness identification procedures.

Rather than rely on standard police lineups, Warden favors a double-blind system, in which law enforcement personnel show photos to an eyewitness one picture at a time. The person showing the photos wouldn’t be directly connected to the case to avoid tipping off the eyewitness to the alleged suspect through body language or verbal cues.

He believes the process could reduce misidentifications by 50 percent.

Warden also wants to form a state commission to review all exonerations. The panel would have the power to issue subpoenas to compel law enforcement officials to turn over records that have a bearing on the case.

Golden says he would like to see the appeals process changed. Currently, a post-conviction appeal goes back to the same judge who heard the original case. Golden said that doesn’t make sense because the judge has a stake in the outcome of the appeal.

“The system is just terribly, terribly stacked,” Golden says.

But just as the death penalty had its opponents, those ideas are likely to face a buzz saw of opposition from prosecutors, police and some lawmakers.

State Rep. Jim Sacia, a former FBI agent, says changing the eyewitness identification process could hamper police from catching the bad guys.

The Pecatonica Republican says police often use eyewitness identifications as just one step in the evidence-gathering process.

“To me, it’s a lead. It doesn’t mean it’s that particular person,” says Sacia, who voted against abolishing the death penalty.

Raoul says he plans to pursue hearings this fall to look at changes in eyewitness identification laws. He also says he wants to hear testimony on whether to expand the state’s law requiring videotaping of all confessions in murder cases.

He says the 2003 videotaping law — pushed through the General Assembly in part by the Center on Wrongful Convictions — has worked to reduce police and prosecutorial misconduct and should now cover all violent felony crimes.

“Whatever fears that may have existed about it … should be allayed,” Raoul says. “I think law enforcement has found it a useful tool.”

Although six other states have followed Illinois’ lead on videotaping in murder cases, Sacia disagrees that it should be expanded. He said videotaping confessions often interrupts the flow of an investigation.

“When you’ve got a person talking, I want to keep them talking,” Sacia says. “As a practical matter, it’s not always ideal to stop an interview to set up a camera.”

Warden says his idea of a commission could hold prosecutors’ feet to the fire when it comes to putting innocent people behind bars.

“They don’t like to admit mistakes because it makes the whole system look bad,” Warden says.

Raoul, vice chairman of the Senate Criminal Law Committee, says he has problems with the idea of Warden’s state commission on exonerations. He says reinvestigating those cases to find out what went wrong could compromise future investigations of the original crime.

Although Raoul is focused on pushing through more reforms, Golden is worried the push may not be a priority for other legislators in the wake of the death penalty abolition. Change, in Springfield, often comes in incremental steps.

“The problem we have now is that it is a struggle to get the policymakers to refocus on the need for resources to help people who were not sentenced to death,” Golden says. 

Kurt Erickson is the Springfield bureau chief for Lee Enterprises newspapers.

Illinois Issues, October 2011