What do we learn from prison tours?

I have, from time to time during my decades as a reporter-type person, had a chance to see prison facilities from the inside.



A picture postcard view of a non-touristy location in Illinois.



So it was with some self-interest that I read the recent Associated Press report about how the Illinois Department of Corrections, under Gov. Pat Quinn, has been inclined to reject all requests for prison tours.

QUINN DEFENDS SUCH rejections on the grounds that they are highly-secure facilities and that having to make the arrangements to ensure that visitors don’t get harmed while on the inside.

“Prisons aren’t country clubs. They’re not there to be visited and looked at,” the governor said.

From my own observations, they definitely aren’t country clubs – except that they’re out in the country in locations fairly isolated from urban areas.

Yet I’m not sure I can get all offended by the restrictions on people being taken on tours of the facilities. In part because that wire service report had something of an undertone of a reporter writing a story to take out their frustration on someone who’s denying them some information.

BUT ALSO BECAUSE of my own experiences in seeing prison facilities (which include Stateville near Joliet, Pontiac and Tamms).

I always got the sense that what I was seeing was such a highly restricted view of prison conditions. I doubt that I was seeing “reality” as it exists within the Illinois Department of Corrections system.

I doubt any reporter-type has seen reality in prison – unless, by some chance, they managed to do something that got them locked up as an inmate!

I remember being shown a stage at Stateville and being told of the quality theatrical productions that inmates there put on from time to time. I also recall the sight of athletic fields and basketball courts.

I’M SURE THERE are some inmates who wile away their time dribbling or wielding a bat in a socially-acceptable manner.

Yet I’m not going to be naïve enough to think that what I saw was close to being the entirety of prison life. Even if that is what I saw on an official tour, as provided by the Illinois Department of Corrections of the kind that it seems are no longer given.

So while some people are going to make sincere arguments about how access to information is better for society, and how state facilities are taxpayer-funded so that we ought to be aware of what is going on, I’m not sure the official prison tour is the best way to find things out.

If anything, I’d want to know about the things I’m not being permitted to see on a tour. That’s probably where the real news lies.

AND AS FOR what I have been allowed to see of prison facilities in Illinois, I must admit to having an impression. The system, by and large, is old!

We have facilities that date back more than a century – 19^th Century incarceration for the needs of the 21^st Century.

When Stateville is one of the state’s newest facilities (opening in 1925), we have to admit that our Department of Corrections probably is long overdue for a construction boom.

All kinds of new facilities to replace those that have been around for decades and are physically capable of having incarcerated generations of certain families. Not a pleasant thought.

NOT ONLY BECAUSE it means so many repeat offenders, but because it means a need that the state can’t possibly pay for. The state can’t even afford to maintain the facilities it has now – take Tamms (one of the few newly-built prisons in Illinois) into consideration.

That, in and of itself, is a story that I’m sure state officials wouldn’t want a lot of emphasis placed upon. Just think what other ugly stories exist within the state prison system?

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What to think about prison closures?

So is this what we’ve come to, our state’s significant industry is building prison facilities for the federal government to operate?

It seems like a bizarre way to have an economy. Yet it seems to be the direction we’re headed in.

REMEMBER THE NEW maximum-security prison near Thompson, Ill., in the northwestern part of the state. Illinois built it, but never opened it because the funds to pay for its operation were never on hand.

It may never have become the place to hold the people now being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo, Cuba on suspicion of terrorism – which would have made so much sense that of course the ideologues didn’t like the idea.

But the federal government is considering using the facility for other purposes within the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Perhaps that is why Gov. Pat Quinn turned to the United States of America when he has another prison facility to sell. It’s not like he has a used car to deal. There aren’t many people or organizations with the potential to buy such a facility.

SO NOW WE can speculate as to whether the Tamms Correctional Center at the far southernmost county of Illinois (only a dozen miles north of Cairo, which is the state’s southernmost tip) will go from being a state facility to a federal one.

For all I know, we’ll get wisecracks about how former governors George Ryan or Rod Blagojevich could wind up getting transferred from their current federal prison facilities to one that they once (theoretically) oversaw.

Quinn literally (according to various news reports inspired by the Associated Press) sent the federal government a letter telling them of Tamms’ isolation from the rest of Illinois (which is something all of Southern Illinois has in common) that would make any federal facility operated there all the more secure.

But I’m not sure just how seriously the U.S. government will take the offer – even if the president himself considers himself an Illinois native.

BECAUSE THE FEDERAL government already had a high-security prison facility located in Southern Illinois – about an hour’s drive to the north in the city of Marion (which at just over 17,000 people might seem like a small suburb, but by Southern Illinois standards is a major urban area that includes the federal courthouse for that part of the state that thinks of itself as Little Egypt).

Back in the days before anyone used the phrase “super-max” to describe a high-security prison kept on “lockdown” mode at all times (instead of just to deal with a potential crisis), the federal correctional center at Marion WAS super-max.

It was the prison opened by the federal government in 1963 to replace Alcatraz when that infamous facility became too old and decrepit to be trusted to house dangerous inmates!

But with the opening of a closed maximum-security (the real term that describes such facilities, not super-max) prison in Florence, Colo., Marion became a medium-security prison. The point being that Southern Illinois’ days of housing such dangerous inmates are over.

UNLESS SOMEBODY BELIEVES that the Marion facility is about to overflow and needs a nearby building to take on the extra hard-cases who need to be kept away from other people, it is uncertain how a Tamms facility would fit into the Bureau of Prisons.

It would appear to be a federal redundancy.

Then again, no one has ever accused the federal government of being run in the most efficient manner possible. So maybe somebody at that level would think such a facility would be worth owning.

So this could be the ultimate reason for supporters of this plan to back Barack Obama for re-election come Nov. 6. Somehow, I suspect that a “President Romney” would be used by the Republican ideologues to “punish” Illinois for having ever created a political person out of Obama.

MY GUESS WOULD be that this long-shot of a plan would be no-shot if Obama himself isn’t around somewhere to nudge it through.

And if that were to happen, we in Illinois would literally be stuck with a modern (and vacant) prison facility to have to watch over – with no real use since Quinn included it (along with the women’s maximum-security prison at Dwight) among facilities to be closed by the state in a cost-cutting move.

As for where all those women are going to be transferred to, that is a commentary for another day.

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What purpose does Tamms really serve? Is Illinois better off without it?

It has been nearly 13 years since the one time I ventured to deep Southern Illinois to see the prison commonly labeled “supermax” – and the one that Gov. Pat Quinn says he’d like to close down as part of his plans to get a grasp on Illinois government’s struggling finances.

The Tamms Correctional Center (officially classified as a “Closed Maximum” unit because of the extreme isolation to which its inmates are subjected) has long been a controversial topic.

What will become of this state facility at 200 E. Supermax Dr., in Tamms, Ill. Photograph provided by U.S. Census Bureau

THERE ARE THOSE human rights activists who think the existence of such a facility in Illinois shows that we’re just as capable as any penny-ante dictator of subjecting our citizenry to abuse.

Others are more than willing to dismiss such claims because they want to believe that extreme measures are justified when it comes to dealing with crime, and punishment.

I’m not so sure where I come down on that particular issue, although a part of me reacted to learning last week of Quinn’s proposed cut by thinking that this particular suggestion could be a short-sighted one.

That facility is one of the newest in the Illinois Department of Corrections system (it opened in 1998). It seems like a waste to shutter it at a time when we really don’t have adequate space for all the inmates our state is expected to care for and supervise.

PERHAPS A RECLASSIFICATION to make it more like a typical prison might be a better use for the place, since it is the extreme security measures that cause it to be so expensive to run.

But then, I recall my own impression of the place – one that has lasted all these years since that date in March, 1999 when I ventured down there as a reporter-type person to see the execution by lethal injection of Andrew Kokoraleis.

It seems wasteful, financially, that they went to the cost of installing a special execution chamber designed specifically for lethal injection – then only used it for that one event. Since it was shortly after that event that then-Gov. George Ryan imposed the death penalty moratorium that last year morphed into an abolition of capital punishment in our state.

But that impression, which recurred to me when I learned of Quinn’s proposed cut, is one of an eerie silence.

YOU DON’T HEAR anything from inmates, who are confined to their cells all but one hour per day and are moved about the place in ways so that inmates never encounter other inmates.

Any inmate who shouts out obscenities is heard only by himself. The only people they see are their jailers. And even then, that is just for brief glimpses.

Which is unlike other prisons, where there is a certain vibe that goes along with a dull roar of noise from the inmates itself. It is a constant reminder that all it would take would be one little spark, and the inmates would outnumber the state officials.

Who’s really in charge?

EVEN THE GUARDS who work at Tamms (I recall) spoke in low, even tones that you had to struggle to hear. Think of the voice of actor Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, in those moments before he tells you that your liver would make a nice supper, if served with “fava beans and a nice chianti.”

Definitely no barking of orders that might give the place an authoritarian vibe.

It almost felt like officials regarded their work there as dealing with people who were mentally disturbed. Which is ironic, because the human rights activists claim it is the constant isolation that turns the Tamms inmates into people with potential for serious mental problems in their future.

Is Quinn, inadvertently, sparing Illinois the cost of future lawsuits from inmates who will claim the state drove them mad, by doing away with the concept of “C-max?” Or is he just overburdening the prisons to whom the roughly 100 Tamms inmates will be transferred to – because they all have incidents in their prison records that indicate they are disciplinary cases.

WHICH HAS ALWAYS been the rhetoric used by state officials to justify such harsh, borderline draconian, conditions.

People sentenced to a prison term don’t get sent to Tamms unless they show themselves to be among the worst, most uncontrollable, of the prison population. Likewise, they have said, inmates who show at Tamms that they can behave can get themselves transferred elsewhere.

Except there are moments when we hear the same lists of inmates who are assigned there, and it seems that the state attitude toward transfer is all too common to the Illinois Prisoner Review Board attitude toward parole – the answer is “No!” unless you can come up with an exceptional reason to justify it.

So when the prison closes in August (assuming the General Assembly goes along with it, and it is very likely that Southern Illinois legislators will hate the idea of closing a place that provides some of their residents with employment), we’ll have to see whether the governor gets credit for closing a potential embarrassment for Illinois, or blame for being too short-sighted!

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Just because people don’t want to hear about Tamms doesn’t make it lesser issue

I understand why most people don’t want to have to think about issues related to prison conditions.

Those of us with any sense of compassion get squeamish at the thought of some of the things that happen in the places where people supposedly are being rehabilitated, while some of us have a twisted enough sense that we enjoy the thought of an inmate suffering somewhat.

BUT THE CONDITIONS at the Tamms Correctional Center (the place where inmates who misbehave in maximum-security prisons are sent as punishment) are severe enough that we as a society probably do need to have a serious discussion about what is appropriate when it comes to inmate discipline.

For the record, I have only been to Tamms once (about 10 years ago as a reporter-type person). I still remember walking through the halls of the facility thinking it was unlike any prison or jail facility I had ever been inside before.

The only other person I saw was the corrections officer who was escorting me to the spot where I was to meet Corrections Department officials. There was none of the rambling noise or clamor of a prison.

No obscenities being shouted me by inmates. But the excess control of movement made for a more tense vibe than I had ever felt inside a prison, or just about any place no matter how intense the security is.

THE “GIMMICK” ABOUT Tamms is that it is a “control unit” facility (although the TV types generally prefer to call it “Supermax”), which means that inmates are kept in their cells for 23 hours per day, and are isolated to such a heavy degree that they never come into contact with each other.

And when it comes to cells, we’re not talking about anything with iron bars and windows. We’re talking closed-off rooms with iron doors.

We’re talking about total isolation from human contact – except to the degree that a guard will have to drop off a meal at the inmate’s cell or escort the inmate to a fenced-in area for an hour’s worth of physical stretching or other exercise per day.

Now if this were truly a case where an inmate was shipped to Tamms for a few weeks of isolation, then sent back to their more conventional (and usually much older) prison facility, there might not be the controversy.

AFTER ALL, PRISONS have usually had a “segregation” unit to keep problem inmates separate from others – sometimes for the isolated inmate’s own safety.

But we’re talking about inmates spending months and months being isolated from any human contact, which can have the effect of messing mentally with those individuals.

We’re talking about some problem inmates who caused so much havoc in the Illinois Department of Corrections that they were shipped to Tamms (the land where one is closer physically and in spirit to Jackson, Miss., than to Chicago) when the facility opened in 1998 – and remain there to this day.

Perhaps it is no great loss that Henry Brisbon (the I-57 Killer of 1970s fame who has since killed another inmate and once attacked notorious serial killer John Gacy when they were at the state prison in Pontiac) is being kept under such conditions, as prison officials believe he is beyond control except under the most extreme circumstances.

BUT IT WOULD seem that the Illinois Department of Corrections is becoming too comfortable with the thought of leaving inmates in Tamms for extended time periods.

There is a reason that Amnesty International, the group that monitors conditions around the world looking for instances of torture and abuse, thinks that the concept of “control unit” prison facilities is just as much torture as anything done in a Cuban facility controlled by the Castro Brothers.

Part of torture is breaking people down mentally.

And whether one wants to accept it or not, forced isolation can cause just about anyone to crack.

IT CAN LITERALLY get to the point where one spends so much time cut off from the rest of the world that they lose what little ability they ever had to interact with other people. Whether that makes them more likely to lash out, or become the victim of such people, varies from person to person.

This is a situation that cannot carry on the status quo.

Just because this particular facility has been built in the most isolated end of Illinois does not give the Illinois public the excuse to ignore the situation.

So it would be nice if Corrections Director Michael Randle were to be successful in implementing portions of a 10-point plan he has concocted in response to the studies that trash the “control-unit” concept.

PROBABLY THE MOST significant of those changes is that inmates will have to be given a serious guess at how long they will be held at the facility. It also would restrict stays at Tamms to no more than a year, unless state officials can justify longer incarceration periods.

These ideas only make sense because prison officials have always defended the concept of prisons like Tamms by saying they are designed for discipline of problem inmates, not their permanent incarceration.

So if the intent is that inmates will eventually be returned to other prisons, we should probably give up on policies meant to mollify that portion of the population that is deluded enough to think that “throwing away the key” accomplishes anything.

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From Guantanamo to Tamms?

It’s more about political grandstanding than offering up a serious suggestion.

I don’t expect the federal government to take Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., up on his offer to take some of those suspected terrorists who have been held at the military base at Guantanamo Bay (that’s Cuba) and keep them in custody in the depths of Southern Illinois.

DURBIN WENT ON the “Meet the Press” program Sunday, and made his statement that Illinois could easily handle some of those people who think they’re earning their way into Heaven by igniting a bomb or two against the Western world.

Specifically, he’d have them sent to the closed-unit prison built near the town of Tamms – located about 12 miles north of the state’s southernmost tip.

To those of us who rely on newspaper headlines and smart aleck pundits for details, a closed-unit facility is known as “supermax,” although most prison officials I have ever met detest that term.

But regardless of what one calls it, Durbin is offering up our state’s most isolated prison as a place to keep people who view themselves as “enemies” of our nation (or may have mistakenly been taken for terrorists, who’s to say. It’s not like these people were ever tried and found guilty of the allegations against them).

“I’D BE OKAY with them in a supermax facility, because we’ve never had an escape from one,” Durbin said during his interview on the long-running weekend interview program whose ratings have been on the decline ever since host Tim Russert passed away last year.

“We have over 340 convicted terrorists now being held safely in our prisons,” said Durbin. “I just don’t hear anyone suggesting releasing them or sending them to another country. That isn’t part of the program that we have before us.”

The issue of the “enemy combatants” picked up in desolate parts of Afghanistan or other parts of the world and being held in U.S. custody has long been a feisty one.

Former President George W. Bush will have the fact that these people were held in Guantanamo Bay as a negative part of his legacy, and that is what is behind President Barack Obama’s desire to get those people off the naval base maintained by our nation at the southeastern tip of Cuba (the bizarre nature of that deal is a topic for another day’s commentary).

OBAMA IS NOBLE enough in his desire to get these people out of a situation where it looks like our nation is incarcerating them without any concern for their legal rights (and yes, every human being has certain legal rights – that’s part of what makes our nation so noble).

But what do we do with them?

The obvious situation would be to hold them within the existing prison system maintained by the federal government. But the Bureau of Prisons only maintains one closed-unit facility (in Colorado), and officials there have made it clear they’re filled close to capacity.

One broadcast report I heard this weekend indicated that prison in Florence, Colo., had room for only one more inmate. Obviously, there is more than one person being held in Cuba who needs to be put elsewhere.

AND NOBODY IS suggesting that one-time Evergreen Park resident Ted Kaczynski (a.k.a., “the Unabomber”) should be moved to a lesser-security prison so that someone who thinks his ultimate reward is 72 virgins can have his cell.

So what should become of these people who have had a particularly un-luxurious Cuban “vacation” in recent years, and whom the United States would prefer not to have freely in circulation around the globe?

The smart aleck in me wants to welcome Durbin’s suggestion.

After all, if the Illinois Department of Corrections were required to take custody of inmates because of the federal government, it would be able to send a bill to Washington for the expense of custody and care of these people.

PERHAPS ONE KEY to helping plug the state’s budgetary problems is to offer up a few cells in Tamms, with the state adding on a certain “gratuity” of sorts to ensure that a profit is made.

I don’t think we’d want to take on so many people to plug the entire budgetary gap, but a few extra bucks couldn’t hurt.

Nonetheless, I don’t seriously expect anyone to take up this suggestion – even though Durbin has offered up Tamms and Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., said last week he’d be willing to have some of those inmates transferred to the maximum-security federal prison in Marion.

I can already hear the outrage of the roughly 5 percent of Illinoisans who live south of Interstate 70 if such “dangerous” people were put in their midst, even though such an argument would be ridiculous.

THE WHOLE CONCEPT of closed unit/supermax/whatever you call it is that inmates are kept in their cells for about 23 hours per day, and NEVER have contact with any human being other than the guard who gets to put them in shackles for the few minutes of fresh air they are allowed each day.

In short, people of Southern Illinois would never see these inmates.

Neither would the rest of Illinois, since Tamms is such an isolated place (I made the drive down there once, it’s not the kind of place one accidentally stumbles across) that one could argue these combatants had more contact with the rest of the world when they were at Guantanamo Bay.

So will it soon become every state’s obligation to take on a few of these inmates (who are a significant part of the Bush legacy) so Obama can try to appear as though he’s being humanitarian? It’s not like life in isolation at Tamms is a picnic.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Did Dick Durbin upstage Newt Gingrich? Or did the Gentleman from Sangamon (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/30913724#30913724) make himself look foolish?

A decade since Death House last used, so why can’t it be retired permanently?

I must confess to being oblivious at the time to the fact that I witnessed a potentially historic event when I was in far Southern Illinois in the early hours of March 17 a full 10 years ago.

I was among the press pool admitted to the Tamms Correctional Center, where the state keeps its death chamber for executions. As a result, I was among those who saw the death by lethal injection of Andrew Kokoraleis – who the way things look now could be the last person ever put to death legally in Illinois as punishment for a crime.

MOST OF MY memories of that evening involve making the long trip to the prison, which is located in the land where the locals think of themselves as living near Kentucky, not Chicago. You drive straight south until you hit Marion and Carbondale – then get hit with the realization that you still have one more hour to drive.

The execution of Kokoraleis – who allegedly was among a group that was killing and mutilating women as part of pseudo-Satanic rituals – was a routine matter. At least it was routine as death ever can be.

After spending the bulk of his last day of life reading a Bible, Kokoraleis recited from the books of Exodus and Proverbs as the mixture of three drugs was pumped into his veins. That caused him to go to sleep, then quit breathing before suffering a fatal heart attack that caused him to be pronounced dead at 12:34 a.m. a decade ago today.

The other aspect I remember was interviewing the father of the woman for whose murder Kokoraleis was put to death. Despite the claims of death penalty proponents that executions give family members closure, they don’t. This father said he was now determined to pray that Kokoraleis suffered in Hell – a truly cheerless thought.

AT THE TIME, the only thing really notable about the Kokoraleis execution was that it was the first to be performed at the brand-new Tamms prison. Much was made of the fact that this facility was designed for lethal injection, rather than the old deathhouse at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet – which was designed for electrocution and where condemned inmates were wheeled on a gurney to a spot underneath the fan that used to suck up the smoke that would emanate from the inmates strapped to the Electric Chair.

But now, it would appear that the death of Kokoraleis will be remembered for being the only execution to ever take place in Tamms, and the last in Illinois.

Because it was shortly after struggling with the death of Kokoraleis (even though he had no doubt personally about his guilt) that then-Gov. George Ryan imposed the moratorium that prevented death row inmates from actually having death dates scheduled for their executions.

It was the first step toward his end-of-term clearing out of “death row” on Illinois. None of his predecessors – Rod Blagojevich or Pat Quinn – have been willing to un-do the death penalty moratorium for Illinois.

SO NONE OF the roughly two dozen prison inmates in Illinois currently serving a death sentence are in danger of dying (except due to natural causes) anytime soon.

That has the people who oppose capital punishment (of which I will confess to being in their ranks) thinking that the state ought to just do away with a capital crimes statute. Why bother to go to the higher expense of maintaining the security necessary for condemned criminals if they’re not going to die?

It would be cheaper to just put them into the general population of Illinois’ prison system, which some death row inmates admit is a thought that scares them more than dying. After all, prisons are filled with criminals who can get violent rather easily.

Despite the notion that the idea of abolishment makes sense, it is not one I expect to see anytime soon. I don’t expect the Legislature to vote favorably on the bill by state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago, to do away with the death penalty.

IT MAY HAVE got a committee’s recommendation, but I will not be the least bit surprised when it dies a lingering (and quiet) death, at the hands of Illinois House leadership.

The simple fact is that capital punishment has become an issue upon which its supporters get irrationally fixated on. Even if the procedure isn’t being put to use, they still want it on the books.

That means the idea of acknowledging reality and making the law comply with actual practice isn’t going to happen.

It doesn’t matter how many people show up to protest at the Statehouse in Springpatch, or at the Thompson Center state government building.

THE PROTEST HELD last week at the state Capitol to acknowledge the 10th anniversary of the death of Kokoraleis was cute, but it didn’t do much of anything to sway the minds of the political people who have a say on this issue.

And personally, I would have taken the group a little more seriously if they had held their anniversary commemoration on Tuesday – the actual date – rather than last week Thursday when it might have been convenient for their group.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Some activists would like to make the execution of Andrew Kokoraleis (http://www.wgil.com/localnews.php?xnewsaction=fullnews&newsarch=032009&newsid=143) a significant turning point in their fight to abolish capital punishment in Illinois.

The thought of being in prison (http://daily-journal.com/archives/dj/display.php?id=436940) can scare even the most so-called violent of inmates.

The death of Kokoraleis turned a Greek Orthodox bishop into an activist opposed to (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1465652,CST-NWS-death08.article) the death penalty.

For what it is worth, following is the dispatch I filed for United Press International from Tamms, Ill., in the early hours of March 17, 1999, following the Kokoraleis execution.

Kokoraleis dies following legal dispute

By GREGORY TEJEDA

TAMMS, Ill., March 17 (UPI) – Illinois officials put Andrew Kokoraleis to death for the 1982 ritual slaying of a suburban Chicago woman.

Kokoraleis, 35, died by lethal injection early today, following a final day of legal appeals that briefly saw an Illinois Supreme Court justice try to postpone the execution indefinitely.

Kokoraleis spent his final day of life Tuesday at the Tamms Correctional Center, where he was under constant observation by prison officials.

He did not request a final meal, and spent the bulk of the day talking with his brother Nicholas and reading a Bible. Prison officials described his demeanor as “cooperative, calm and polite.”

Kokoraleis said he was at peace with himself, and asked the forgiveness of the family of his victim, Lorraine Borowski.

“I am truly sorry for your loss. I mean this sincerely,” Kokoraleis said.

As a lethal combination of three drugs was injected into his left arm, he quoted from the Bible, reading passages from the books of Exodus and Proverbs.

The drugs took about four minutes to take effect, putting Kokoraleis to sleep before he stopped breathing. Kokoraleis was pronounced dead at 12:34 a.m.

Kokoraleis became the first person put to death in the state’s new execution chamber at Tamms. Previously, executions were carried out at the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet.

Kokoraleis died for the 1982 slaying of Borowski, and Elmhurst woman whom prosecutors say was butchered as part of a pseudo-Satanic ritual by Kokoraleis and three other men.

Prosecutors say as many as 18 women were killed in such a manner, and Kokoraleis was serving life prison terms for other slayings.

His attorneys argued he was not involved with the Borowski slaying, claiming he confessed to it only because he feared a beating by police.

Their appeals centered on the notion that more time was needed to thoroughly investigate the case.

Death penalty opponents also tried filing motions to delay the execution on the grounds that a review of Illinois’ death penalty law is needed, in light of the fact that 11 death row inmates in the past decade were later absolved of the crimes for which they were condemned.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan, in rejecting clemency for Kokoraleis, admitted concern about that aspect, saying he “struggled with his decision.”

But in the end, Ryan said, he denied clemency because “some crimes are so horrible and so heinous that society has a right to deal the ultimate penalty.”

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Copyright 1999 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.

Execute the Death Penalty

For all practical purposes, Illinois no longer has a death penalty.

The 11 inmates currently sentenced to die for their crimes all are in early stages of their legally mandated rounds of appeals, and it will be years before any Illinois governor will be put in a position of having to decide whether last-minute clemency is warranted.

In fact, the closed-maximum security prison at Tamms has a modern execution chamber that has only been used once in the nearly 10 years that the “supermax” prison in far Southern Illinois has been open.

But after watching New Jersey state officials this month take steps to abolish their capital crimes statutes outright, one has to wonder when Illinois will follow suit and make the ban official. Illinois’ stalemate on the death penalty issue is particularly sad when one considers that the state was once at the forefront of the abolition movement.

When then-Gov. George Ryan ended his political career early in 2003 by commuting the sentences of nearly 160 Illinois death row inmates to life in prison without parole, it seemed like just a matter of time before the capital crimes statute would disappear. But Ryan's successor, incumbent Gov. Rod Blagojevich, while leaving in place a moratorium that prevents the Illinois Supreme Court from actually scheduling executions to take place, has not wanted to touch the issue any further.

Republican candidates in the 2002 and 2006 gubernatorial campaigns tried to make an issue by saying they would eliminate the Ryan-imposed moratorium and re-instate death by lethal injection as a penalty for particularly heinous crimes.

But there doesn’t seem to be much of a taste for it in Illinois, which actually reflects the mood across the United States. The New York Times reported earlier this week that few states outside of Texas were doing any executions at all.

In the Midwestern Great Lakes states, only Ohio and Indiana have had executions – two apiece – during 2007. Forty of the 50 states have done no executions this year, even though 38 states had capital crimes statutes on their books until last week when New Jersey dropped the punishment and commuted the sentences of its eight death row inmates to life prison terms.

So what’s stopping Illinois from following suit?

There’s the fact that most people consider the issue to be a moot point here because none of the people sentenced to death since 2003 are anywhere near ready to actually being scheduled for a death date in the lethal injection chamber.

It’s seen by many politicians as an issue best ignored until the future, largely because the segment of the population that favors capital punishment does so with a vengeance.

I still remember the sight of hundreds of protesters outside the Stateville Correctional Center near Joliet, Ill., who were on hand to cheer for the death of serial killer John Gacy. They went so far as to heckle and harass the clergy and other religious activists who tried to have a candlelight vigil and pray for Gacy’s soul. Any attempt to ban the death penalty will stir up a vocal minority, one that political people would prefer to let sleep until absolutely necessary.

That’s part of what made it shocking that the State Journal-Register, the daily newspaper in Springfield, Ill., came out this week in favor of an outright ban on the death penalty.

“Imposition of the death penalty is notoriously capricious, with racial, social and economic factors often becoming contributing factors in whether a jury decides a defendant should be put to death or spend life in prison,” the newspaper wrote.

“Fundamentally, our opposition is rooted in the issue of justice versus revenge. As a society, we can define justice through the laws we make and administer it through our courts,” wrote the capital city’s newspaper. “We can’t define revenge, nor can we as a society administer it, but often that is what we seek in applying the death penalty.”

Not that I expect the editorial to have much sway. In fact, some political people will go out of their way to back the death penalty just BECAUSE the Journal-Register called for its abolition.

But the death penalty is one issue where the Roman Catholic Church gets it right. The church used to accept the idea of executions out of the belief that some criminals were so dangerous that only their elimination would protect the public.

Executions were never supposed to be about vengeance, and the Catholic church sees modern prisons such as the Tamms “supermax” as being secure enough to protect the public from dangerous inmates.

The death penalty may once have had a place in our society. But today, executions are as obsolete as buggy whips, blacksmiths, a Model T Ford and the video game Pong. It’s time for the death penalty to die in Illinois.

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The following link is to the State Journal-Register editorial calling on Illinois government to abolish the death penalty. http://www.sj-r.com/Opinion/stories/22418.asp