The Republican Nomination For President: The Race For The Race For The White House

So now Patti Reagan is the moral compass of your life?

Perry is starting to notice that the TP fanatics are just that. He should watch whose banner he wants to fly.

Illinois Governor Suspends Executions Until Capital Punishment Procedures Thoroughly Investigated

Feb 28, 2000

Recently, Illinois has seen more of its death sentences overturned than it has carried out, so Gov. George Ryan plans to block executions altogether pending a special investigation, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The decision would make Illinois the first state to stop executions while it reviews its death penalty procedures, the newspaper reported.

"You have a system right now ... that's fraught with error and has innumerable opportunities for innocent people to be executed," Ryan spokesman Dennis Culloton told the Tribune. The governor "is determined not to make that mistake."

Ryan still supports the death penalty, but Illinois has "a problem that's too big for case-by-case review," Culloton said. "It's clear the system is broken."

Ryan will create a special panel to study the state's capital punishment system in general and determine what happened in the 13 cases in which men were wrongly convicted since Illinois reinstated the death penalty in 1977. Twelve people have been executed since then.

One wrongly convicted inmate, Anthony Porter, spent 15 years on death row and came within two days of being executed before a college class proved his innocence. Porter was released last year.

Of the 38 death penalty states, only Nebraska has taken a similar step. But after the state legislature passed a moratorium last year, the governor vetoed it.

The Illinois House approved a bill to impose a moratorium last year, but it failed in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Groups that have campaigned against the death penalty said they considered the governor's announcement a leap in garnering wider acceptance of moratoriums on capital punishment and predicted that Ryan's commission of inquiry would aid in focusing the nation's attention on whether or not the death penalty is being imposed fairly.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_12_97/ai_60041433/

...

"If the state of Illinois had its way, I would be dead today," says Darby Tillis, a one-time death row inmate. So would 12 others. But Illinois isn't the only state that has almost made a fatal mistake.

Florida has freed 18 condemned men and woman. Texas and Oklahoma 7 each, Georgia 6. Nationwide, 86 people have walked free.

"It's a national problem. I think that Illinois is getting so much attention because of the effort of journalists, college students and other people outside the system who have brought these cases to public attention." says Northwestern University professor David Protess. He supervised a team of volunteer investigators and student sleuths whose efforts freed Anthony Porter. But he wonders: If 86 mistakes were caught, how many others have gone unnoticed?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/01/31/national/main155090.shtml

so what's the big deal...?

I feel another bet coming on.

No I'm not, you muddied the water by throwing in populist opinion. A lot of people over here may be in favour of the death penalty, but not so much that they'd get off their arses and do anything. When people hear about the sort of things that happen in countries with the death penalty they're even less inclined to get off their arses.

My original point was that Texas executes significantly more people per capita than other states. Do you dispute that?

If I get it right Texas stance on public execution is way out of kilter with the rest of America, lket alone the rest of the world.