Illinois can't afford its death penalty system

When I tell people that I work in death-penalty defense, they often express surprise. They say: "I thought Illinois got rid of the death penalty!" That is true, to an extent. There has been a moratorium on executions since 2000. No death sentence has been carried out since then, and none is foreseeable. But the state continues to seek the death penalty and sentence people to death.

The life-and-death nature of these cases comes at great expense. The Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court require that death-penalty defendants be afforded "heightened due process," because this is the ultimate punishment, and, if we're going to do it, we must do it right. This means more experts. Longer trials. More lawyers. More complicated appeals. As a result, death-penalty cases cost far more than cases in which the maximum sentence is life without the possibility of parole.

At any given time, there are a couple hundred death-penalty cases pending in Illinois' courts. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias' Web site says that the state's $12 million Capital Litigation Trust Fund pays between $500,000 and $700,000 in an average death-penalty case. Add to that the costs that are not paid by the fund — but are instead paid by the budgets of prosecutors, defense organizations, law enforcement agencies and the courts — and each death-penalty case could easily cost more than $1 million.

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By Betsy Wilson, Chicago Tribune, January 22, 2010