Best-selling author and attorney Scott Turow addressed the pros and cons of the death penalty Thursday before an audience of about 200 people, half of them students, at Antioch Community High School.
Turow's appearance concludes the school's "One book, one community" initiative that invited students and community members to read Turow's book, "Ultimate Punishment: A lawyer's reflections on dealing with the death penalty."
Admittedly a death penalty "agnostic," Turow was appointed in 2000 by former Gov. George Ryan to the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment. He took his job seriously and he did extensive research. His book, published in 2003, is based on that research, as well as his experiences as a prosecutor and his later work on behalf of death row inmates as a defense attorney.
As he did in his book, Thursday night Turow shared his back-and-forth reasoning as he reviewed the major points that are often cited to support the death penalty. He has been directly involved in death penalty cases, including successfully representing 2 different individuals on appeal after they were sentenced to the death penalty. He speaks from experience.
"I have felt every way possible on this issue," said Turow. "In college I thought it was barbaric. As a prosecutor I changed my view to 'ugly necessity.' But most of the time I was a death penalty agnostic and my opinion would swing back and forth."
He started out his own internal debate by asking himself: "Is the crime horrible enough to warrant death?" He said it was not the right question to ask.
"Rather, I had to ask: Is there a way to create a system that will reach only the right cases without reaching the wrong cases? We will never construct a system that does that."
Ultimately, he recommended abolishing the death penalty. "I reached that conclusion at the end of my two years on the commission and I haven't changed my mind."
Along the way he examined all the possible reasons to justify a death sentence. "There are brutal crimes that are so horrific we can't imagine any other punishment other than death."
He cited John Wayne Gacy, who was put to death in 1994 for the murders of 33 boys. "He committed crimes so horrific they were beyond description. I was asked to speak out on the death penalty on behalf of Gacy and I could not do it."
Death for the most horrific crimes makes sense, said Turow. "For ultimate evil there must be ultimate punishment. But that argument treats the death penalty as symbolic. We are simply making a moral statement."
The Gacy case was a rare case of the guilt being clear and the crime being brutal and horrific beyond human comprehension, "but as I read every capital case in Illinois I could not find a guiding hand in how that conclusion was reached."
As it functions today, the death penalty is handed down as randomly as the spin of a roulette wheel, said Turow. "It can be handed down by a judge who is having a bad day, or to a defendant who can't afford representation."
While death in Gacy's case may have been appropriate, other mass murderers, including Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who killed three and injured 11 people, and Gary Ridgway, who killed 48 women as the Green River killer, are in super maximum prisons, receiving sentences of life in prison without parole, even though their crimes were brutal enough to justify death.
"Their crimes were as horrific as the Gacy case," said Turow. "Receiving the death penalty is a crapshoot."
Turow said if someone killed one of his family members, he wouldn't hesitate to want to see the offender put to death, so he sympathizes with the desire for vengeance. But instead of death, he favors incarceration in super maximum prisons.
"Super max is no picnic. The ugly reality is these murderers live in 8-by-8-foot cages with virtually no human contact for the rest of their lives."
As for the argument that life in prison is more expensive than death, he found the opposite to be true. "Death is difficult and expensive, with endless appeals."
He said that the nature of a capital crime becomes the principal evidence in a case, and there is a tendency to convict even if all the evidence doesn't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
"In Illinois our error rate is 10 percent," he said. "Of the 170 people on death row in 2000, 17 were exonerated. Capital cases have inherent capacity to get the wrong guy, and how high of an error rate are we willing to accept?"
Source: Suburban Chicago News
Turow's appearance concludes the school's "One book, one community" initiative that invited students and community members to read Turow's book, "Ultimate Punishment: A lawyer's reflections on dealing with the death penalty."
Admittedly a death penalty "agnostic," Turow was appointed in 2000 by former Gov. George Ryan to the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment. He took his job seriously and he did extensive research. His book, published in 2003, is based on that research, as well as his experiences as a prosecutor and his later work on behalf of death row inmates as a defense attorney.
As he did in his book, Thursday night Turow shared his back-and-forth reasoning as he reviewed the major points that are often cited to support the death penalty. He has been directly involved in death penalty cases, including successfully representing 2 different individuals on appeal after they were sentenced to the death penalty. He speaks from experience.
"I have felt every way possible on this issue," said Turow. "In college I thought it was barbaric. As a prosecutor I changed my view to 'ugly necessity.' But most of the time I was a death penalty agnostic and my opinion would swing back and forth."
He started out his own internal debate by asking himself: "Is the crime horrible enough to warrant death?" He said it was not the right question to ask.
"Rather, I had to ask: Is there a way to create a system that will reach only the right cases without reaching the wrong cases? We will never construct a system that does that."
Ultimately, he recommended abolishing the death penalty. "I reached that conclusion at the end of my two years on the commission and I haven't changed my mind."
Along the way he examined all the possible reasons to justify a death sentence. "There are brutal crimes that are so horrific we can't imagine any other punishment other than death."
He cited John Wayne Gacy, who was put to death in 1994 for the murders of 33 boys. "He committed crimes so horrific they were beyond description. I was asked to speak out on the death penalty on behalf of Gacy and I could not do it."
Death for the most horrific crimes makes sense, said Turow. "For ultimate evil there must be ultimate punishment. But that argument treats the death penalty as symbolic. We are simply making a moral statement."
The Gacy case was a rare case of the guilt being clear and the crime being brutal and horrific beyond human comprehension, "but as I read every capital case in Illinois I could not find a guiding hand in how that conclusion was reached."
As it functions today, the death penalty is handed down as randomly as the spin of a roulette wheel, said Turow. "It can be handed down by a judge who is having a bad day, or to a defendant who can't afford representation."
While death in Gacy's case may have been appropriate, other mass murderers, including Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who killed three and injured 11 people, and Gary Ridgway, who killed 48 women as the Green River killer, are in super maximum prisons, receiving sentences of life in prison without parole, even though their crimes were brutal enough to justify death.
"Their crimes were as horrific as the Gacy case," said Turow. "Receiving the death penalty is a crapshoot."
Turow said if someone killed one of his family members, he wouldn't hesitate to want to see the offender put to death, so he sympathizes with the desire for vengeance. But instead of death, he favors incarceration in super maximum prisons.
"Super max is no picnic. The ugly reality is these murderers live in 8-by-8-foot cages with virtually no human contact for the rest of their lives."
As for the argument that life in prison is more expensive than death, he found the opposite to be true. "Death is difficult and expensive, with endless appeals."
He said that the nature of a capital crime becomes the principal evidence in a case, and there is a tendency to convict even if all the evidence doesn't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
"In Illinois our error rate is 10 percent," he said. "Of the 170 people on death row in 2000, 17 were exonerated. Capital cases have inherent capacity to get the wrong guy, and how high of an error rate are we willing to accept?"
Source: Suburban Chicago News
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