Prosecutors in Monroe County, Illinois now have 120 days to decide whether they want to pursue the death penalty against Chris Coleman. But with a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, the decision to many seems to carry little weight.
St Clair County State's Attorney Bob Haida tells me that juries these days are sometimes confused over whether there is still a death penalty in Illinois. The moratorium was designed to clear up the problems within the system in which death row inmates were wrongly convicted at alarming numbers.
Opponents contend this problem can never be fixed, and with over 100 counties in Illinois the application of the death penalty can be arbitrary, differing from one county to the next for the same crime.
So all of this leaves us here where Governor Quinn is apparently in no hurry to end the moratorium allowing death penalty cases to be tried, but the punishment never to be carried out.

Leave a comment

Name:

Email:

URL:  

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.