USA - The assembly of the Illinois State Bar Association has voted to support abolishing the death penalty in the state.

The assembly of the Illinois State Bar Association has voted to support abolishing the death penalty in the state. The assembly announced the vote saying that it would support state legislation to stop the practice.
"The application of the death penalty in Illinois has been demonstrated to be flawed beyond any doubt," Jack Carey, the president of the association, said in a press release. "Our position is that the death penalty is not fixable and should be discontinued to avoid the grossest miscarriage of justice imaginable, the death of an innocent person." The assembly, which includes 201 representatives drawn from some of the organization's 35,000 members, debated the issue last week at its annual meeting and then voted to take this stance for the first time. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan, in 2000 suspended state executions after some prisoners were found to have been wrongfully convicted. Just before leaving office in 2003, Ryan cleared death row entirely, sparing 167 people from execution. Most had their sentences commuted to life in prison, though a handful got outright pardons. Nonetheless, the state's legislature has not passed legislation halting the death penalty, leaving the policy in limbo. In 2004, the new governor Rod Blagojevich signed into law capital punishment reforms - including mandatory videotaped confessions in murder cases, restrictions on testimony from jailhouse informants and broader use of DNA analysis - and created a committee to review the reforms annually for 5 years. But the panel has rarely had enough members - appointed by Blagojevich - to do its work, and the governor vetoed its funding this year. Meanwhile, prosecutors are slower to seek the death penalty. 15 people have been sentenced to death in Illinois since 2003 - 1 apparently committed suicide recently - compared to 33 who were condemned in the 5 years before the commutations.