A Death Penalty Case in Illinois: Ill. v William Riley and Sirena Smith

摘要

In 2000, Illinois' one-time pro-death penalty Governor, George Ryan, imposed a moratorium on all executions in Illinois. Before leaving office in 2003, he eventually commuted the sentences of all death row inmates to life without parole. His concerns were not with the morality of the death penalty, but on the actual guilt of the condemned. Several death row inmates had been proven innocent and released from jail before their sentences had been carried out. He declared that "the system is broken." Based on news reports, Ryan was concerned that flaws in the system, including police misconduct, poorly trained defense attorneys, and the testimony of jailhouse informants resulted in innocent people being sentenced to death. These concerns held all aspects of the legal system to scrutiny. An independent review of each of the death row inmates' cases, including the forensic evidence, may have caused Ryan to reconsider his decision. The following is an account of the forensic evidence from a 1997 homicide investigation.