SPRINGFIELD, IL – For the first time in recent memory, legislation to abolish the death penalty in Illinois has cleared a House committee.  The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Karen Yarbrough (D-Maywood), and the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (ICADP) are planning an extensive outreach effort for next week to convince lawmakers to do the right thing and finally end the practice of state-sponsored homicide in Illinois.
 
“Although we have a moratorium and haven’t executed anyone in the last eight years, it’s time to take the extra step and abolish the death penalty for good,” Yarbrough said.  “We know the capital punishment system is unfair, highly expensive to taxpayers, and does not serve as a deterrent to crime.  The time for abolition is now.”
 
Yarbrough’s House Bill 262 would abolish the death penalty immediately, and would require all persons currently on death row be resentenced to life in prison without parole, or a lesser sentence deemed appropriate by a court.  In 2000, former Governor George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois after it was discovered that 13 death row inmates were exonerated and found innocent of the crimes for which they were sentenced to death.  The moratorium is still in place.
 
According to the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, every state that has done a cost study of the death penalty has found that death penalty cases cost millions to hundreds of millions of dollars more than non-death cases.  In the past five fiscal years, almost $73 million has been allocated to the Capital Litigation Trust Fund, while the total cost is much higher when local law enforcement and county expenditures are counted.
 
"The Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty would like to thank Representative Yarbrough for her leadership and courage to stand against the death penalty,” said Jeremy Schroeder, Executive Director of the ICADP.  “More Illinoisans have learned the facts about the death penalty; that the death penalty is an expensive system prone to error that does not make our communities safer.  Public support has thus dropped for the death penalty to the point where abolition is the right answer."
 
For more information, please contact Yarbrough’s constituent service office at (708) 615-1747.