The professors, who in the past had done most of their work under the pressure of impending execution dates, were given breathing room in January 2000 when Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, imposed a moratorium on the state's use of the death penalty, effectively giving a stay of execution to all 175 death row inmates while a committee reviews the state's capital punishment system.
But as Ryan's tenure comes to an end — he has announced he won't run for re-election in November 2002 — moratorium advocates fear that a change in leadership will prevent needed reforms to the system.
The Next Governor?
Most of the candidates, both Democrat and Republican, support Ryan's moratorium and say they will await the commission's recommendation before taking action.
The three Democrats contending for their party's nomination — Paul Vallas, NU alumnus Rod Blagojevich and Kellogg Prof. Michael Bakalis — all said they support the death penalty but will keep the moratorium in place until needed reforms are made.
Paul Vallas, the former chief executive officer for Chicago's public schools, said through spokeswoman Jennifer Maley that one innocent person put to death is too many. Maley said Vallas will focus primarily on education, the economy and health care.
"The moratorium is in place for a reason," Maley said. "Until the commission can come up with a way to ensure that each person sentenced to death has adequate legal counsel and there's no doubt they are guilty, Mr. Vallas will not lift the moratorium."
Pete Giangreco, spokesman for U.S. Rep. Blagojevich, said that if Blagojevich was elected, the moratorium would not be lifted until major reforms were made to the system.
"Rod is a former assistant state's attorney for Cook County and supports the death penalty, but has seen firsthand the problems with the system," Giangreco said.
Michael Bakalis said he supports the moratorium and intends to make reforms to the system before lifting it if he's elected governor. But he said the moratorium is not a major issue in the primary campaigns of candidates in either party.
"There's always a question about it," Bakalis said. "It's not overwhelming people's interest."
Republican candidates Lt. Gov. Corrine Wood, state Sen. Patrick O'Malley and state Attorney General Jim Ryan aren't all on the same page, though. Wood supports the moratorium, O'Malley said he would end it right away and Ryan hasn't issued his position.
"While I am a supporter of capital punishment, I feel that there are fundamental flaws with the current system that need to be addressed before any more innocent men or women are put to death," said Wood in a statement released by deputy press secretary Charles Keller.
O'Malley, a state senator for the 18th District, said through spokesman Dan Proft that he will lift the moratorium if he is elected governor. O'Malley calls the moratorium unconstitutional, a legal fiction and nothing more than a public relations stunt orchestrated by Ryan.
The campaign for Attorney General Jim Ryan, the other Republican candidate, could not be reached for comment.
History of the moratorium
If the next governor ends the moratorium without making reforms to the capital punishment system, Medill Prof. David Protess said decisions in capital cases would be subject to a system that is broken and cannot be fixed.
Since Illinois reinstituted the death penalty in 1977, 288 have been sentenced to death, but only 12 have been executed. That is one less than the 13 that NU Law's Center for Wrongful Convictions and Protess' students have helped exonerate since 1987.
In June 1996, Protess and his students helped solve the "Ford Heights Four" case, in which two men were mistakenly sentenced to death for a 1978 murder.
Protess and a different group of Medill students helped exonerate another wrongfully convicted man, Anthony Porter, less than 48 hours before his scheduled execution in February 1999.
In a May 2000 visit to NU, Ryan credited the work by Protess' students for bringing the problems of Illinois capital punishment system to the attention of the national media.
Protess, who now serves as director of the Medill Innocence Project, which investigates and exposes wrongful convictions in capital cases in Illinois as well as other states, said those exonerations justify the moratorium, but he questions the effectiveness of Ryan's commission.
"Reforming the system will decrease the likelihood for error but will never eliminate it," Protess said. "The people who run the system — prosecutors, police, defense lawyers, judges and jurors — are fallible and inevitably (will) make mistakes under any system."
After imposing the moratorium, Ryan created a commission to review Illinois' system of capital punishment and recommend reforms. The commission, whose members include former Sen. Paul Simon of Illinois and legal thriller author Scott Turow, has yet to make any recommendations on what reforms should be made.
The Center on Wrongful Convictions, which aided nine of the 13 exonerated, is a co-sponsor of the Illinois Death Penalty Education Project. Rob Warden and NU Law Prof. Larry Marshall, a colleague of Warden's at the center, serve on the education project's board.
The project recommended several reforms to the commission appointed by Ryan, including using forensic science more often in capital cases and improving safeguards against false witness identification, which Warden said is the most prevalent factor leading to wrongful convictions.
"(The center) believes that it would be unconscionable to resume executions until additional safeguards are put into place," Warden said. "These reforms are needed at a minimum before the moratorium is lifted regardless of who is governor," he said.
Activism on campus
Student political groups at NU are planning to make the death penalty a much larger issue in the campaign by educating the public about the death penalty and the moratorium.
Weinberg sophomore Mary Jones, publicity chairwoman for the College Republicans, said most members do not support the moratorium, but there is a very vocal minority who do.
"Most of us do not like Ryan anyway, because he's done a lot of things that we do not approve of as conservatives," Jones said.
"O'Malley is our running mate because, at least on this issue, he presents his case in a logical way," she said.
College Republicans are looking to hold a debate before the Republican primary in March and want to encourage individual students to work on the various campaigns, Jones said.
While College Republicans are taking a more active role, Colin Proksel, president of NU's College Democrats, said his organization has no official stance on the death penalty or moratorium.
Two other groups on campus, ACLU-NU and Amnesty International, are planning non-partisan educational projects leading up to the election in November.
Education senior Claire O'Connor, president of NU's chapter of Amnesty International, said she doubts that any of the current candidates will be so progressive on the issue of the moratorium as Ryan was. Amnesty International is planning a February event called "Live from Death Row," which will allow NU students to have a live telephone conversation with an inmate currently on death row.
Weinberg junior Tina Valkanoff, ACLU-NU executive director, said the group's death penalty committee is currently in transition following a restructuring of the organization.
"We hope to get a new death penalty committee chair so programming can be done in the winter and the spring," Valkanoff said.
