Prompt
Directions: Read the documents below and answer the questions that follow.
Due Process and the Death Penalty
Nowhere has the right of due process been more significant than in death penalty cases. Because of the seriousness of the charges and the seriousness of the punishment, courts carefully consider a defendant’s due process rights in these cases. For many years, however, serious flaws have appeared in the death-penalty system across the country.
In 1999, reports from the Chicago Tribune examined all 285 death penalty cases that had occurred in Illinois since the death penalty was reinstated for capital crimes in 1977. They discovered a system with serious problems, one that failed to provide many defendants with due process. The Tribune reported:
“With their lives on the line, many defendants have been represented by the legal profession’s worst, not its best. They have been given the ultimate punishment based on evidence that too often is inconclusive, and sometimes nearly nonexistent. They have seen their fates decided not by juries that reflect the community as a whole but by juries that include not a single member of their racial minority. They have been condemned to die in trials so rife with error that nearly half of the State’s death-penalty cases have been reversed on appeal.”
In fact, 12 men sentenced to death row have been exonerated and released, the same number that have been executed in the State since 1977. The reporters found that although defendants were provided with lawyers, often these lawyers had been disbarred or suspended from the legal profession.
The Governor Responds
In February 2000, in response to the Tribune article, Governor George Ryan of Illinois declared a moratorium on all executions in his State. He explained his reasoning:
“Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate.”
Ryan said that he would not allow another execution in the State until a committee had studied the problem and made recommendations. Illinois became the first of the 38 States with the death penalty to have such a moratorium.
Questions to answer in the box below:
1. What did the Chicago Tribune reporters discover about the juries that rule in some death penalty cases?
2. What reason did Governor Ryan give for suspending the death penalty?
3. Explain an individual’s due process rights for the 4th, 5th, 6th and 14 amendments.
4. Based on the Governor’s decision, choose one amendment mentioned above that you think primarily supports his argument for declaring a moratorium on all executions in his state, explain?
