By C1 Staff
CHICAGO — A recent editorial in the Chicago Tribune posits that spending one’s life in prison without the possibility of parole isn’t worse than execution, and offers some facts to back up this claim.
John P. McCormick comments on the current life or death sentencing for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev by writing about former Gov. George Ryan commuting the death row sentences of 167 inmates without the authority to do so – that is, having the inmates submit a signed petition asking for clemency.
With the door of possibility opened, what would the inmates choose to do?
One hundred and forty-six of the inmates submitted sign petitions to commute their sentences to life in prison, with unsigned petitions covering another 20 inmates.
Only one made no request for clemency.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the State Supreme Court to reverse Ryan’s decision to commute the sentences, claiming he’d overstepped his boundaries by granting clemency to the 20 inmates who hadn’t submitted signed petitions.
Capital punishment in Illinois was then repealed shortly after.
A recent Gallup poll on support for the death penalty in the U.S. found that 63 percent are in favor, and 33 percent are opposed.