Bleeding-Heart Liberals' Attack on Death Penalty Backfires
Posted: 2002-10-25 02:01pm
http://www.qctimes.com/internal.php?sto ... 24,1002874
Illinois hearings set back opponents
CHICAGO (AP) — For almost two weeks, the details of Illinois’ most gruesome murders have been replayed for the public in marathon clemency hearings that opponents of the death penalty now believe may have backfired on their cause.
The hearings, for almost every inmate on Illinois’ death row, had been seen as the culmination of a long fight against injustices in the state’s death penalty system. Gov. George Ryan even suggested that at the end he might grant blanket clemency to all 159 inmates on death row.
But Ryan backed away from those comments this week, as the litany of horrors continued to play out.
“The pain and passion of these families is deafening,” said Larry Marshall, a Northwestern University law professor who has been a driving force in exposing problems with Illinois’ death penalty system. “It’s so overwhelming that people are forgetting all the problems that got us here.”
So overwhelming, in fact, that Chicago’s two major newspapers have urged Ryan to stop the hearings. “Halt the anguish, Gov. Ryan,” implored a Chicago Tribune editorial. “Ryan’s hearings cruel and unusual,” headlined a Chicago Sun-Times editorial.
Defense attorneys had hoped the focus would be on the problems that prompted Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in 2000. A commission recommended 85 measures to ensure fairness at every level of the state’s criminal justice system.
But it was clear almost from the beginning that the focus would be on the crimes themselves and the families they devastated.
“I can’t imagine the public has heard such a parade of horrors combined into such a short time period in American history,” said John Gorman, a spokesman for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
In the space of a week, the public heard once again about:
•A couple who shot and killed a woman, cut her nearly full-term baby from her womb and killed two of her other children.
•Two brothers who beat a sleeping couple to death with baseball bats.
•A father who tortured his mute, severely retarded and handicapped stepdaughter for five years until she died.
•A man who intentionally bumped a car with his, and told the couple in the car he hit to kiss their last kiss before he killed them.
All but lost in the catalogue of brutality were the arguments of defense attorneys.
During an early hearing, Marshall spoke about corrupt judges, mentally retarded defendants allowed to represent themselves and police officers who tortured confessions out of suspects.
Then it was the prosecutor’s turn. Cook County assistant state’s attorney Paul Tsukuno took the parole board back to 1983 when Reginald and Jerry Mahaffey broke into a Chicago home and attacked a sleeping couple.
He told of the baseball bat that struck Dean Pueschel with such force that parts of his skull “looked like a crushed egg shell.”
He recounted how Jo Ellen Pueschel died hearing her son say to her, “Just lay down.”
Family members spoke next. “There is no doubt they are guilty and they deserve to die,” said Mary Heinrich, Jo Ellen Pueschel’s sister-in-law, spitting the last words directly at Marshall.
If defense attorneys wanted to talk about things like unreliable jailhouse snitches, prosecutors wanted the board, the media and ultimately the public to hear and see something else.
When it was their turn, family members transformed the hearing rooms into photo galleries of the dead. They pointed to the infants in the audience who would never know their grandfathers, the sons and daughters who grew up without parents.
On Wednesday, James Dudovick held up a picture of his daughter, Dawn, who was stabbed to death 14 years ago by William Peeples. He said he still sets a place for her every holiday. “We have life in prison, too,” he told the board.
Board members were not unaffected. “You could not sit in that room without feeling human and without feeling how vulnerable it is to be human,” said Arvin Boddie, who was removed from the panel after he criticized the hearings.
“It’s like going to six wakes a day for 21/2 weeks,” said Craig Findley, another panel member.
Death penalty opponents acknowledged they could not overcome the words of the family members.
“I do think that this is one of those occasions where there are some important pressing arguments about due process (and) fairness,” said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “But it’s hard to put that in the forefront in the face of what these families are saying.”
Marshall said the same “phenomenon” happens at trial. “Raw pain can obscure any meaningful assessment of the facts and the evidence.”
Boddie blamed defense attorneys.
“They had a plan to make a broadside attack on the death penalty,” he said. “It seems like they took an all-or-nothing strategy, and when you do that one of the things you can get is nothing. And they got nothing.”
Defense lawyers requested the hearings after Ryan said last spring that he would review every death penalty case before he leaves office in January.
Any chance the petitions would be a sterile paper battle between lawyers was lost when prosecutors and family members demanded to be heard.
In the end, Ryan will decide what to do with the stack of clemency petitions. He can take the confidential recommendations of the board or ignore them.
Illinois hearings set back opponents
CHICAGO (AP) — For almost two weeks, the details of Illinois’ most gruesome murders have been replayed for the public in marathon clemency hearings that opponents of the death penalty now believe may have backfired on their cause.
The hearings, for almost every inmate on Illinois’ death row, had been seen as the culmination of a long fight against injustices in the state’s death penalty system. Gov. George Ryan even suggested that at the end he might grant blanket clemency to all 159 inmates on death row.
But Ryan backed away from those comments this week, as the litany of horrors continued to play out.
“The pain and passion of these families is deafening,” said Larry Marshall, a Northwestern University law professor who has been a driving force in exposing problems with Illinois’ death penalty system. “It’s so overwhelming that people are forgetting all the problems that got us here.”
So overwhelming, in fact, that Chicago’s two major newspapers have urged Ryan to stop the hearings. “Halt the anguish, Gov. Ryan,” implored a Chicago Tribune editorial. “Ryan’s hearings cruel and unusual,” headlined a Chicago Sun-Times editorial.
Defense attorneys had hoped the focus would be on the problems that prompted Ryan to declare a moratorium on executions in 2000. A commission recommended 85 measures to ensure fairness at every level of the state’s criminal justice system.
But it was clear almost from the beginning that the focus would be on the crimes themselves and the families they devastated.
“I can’t imagine the public has heard such a parade of horrors combined into such a short time period in American history,” said John Gorman, a spokesman for the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.
In the space of a week, the public heard once again about:
•A couple who shot and killed a woman, cut her nearly full-term baby from her womb and killed two of her other children.
•Two brothers who beat a sleeping couple to death with baseball bats.
•A father who tortured his mute, severely retarded and handicapped stepdaughter for five years until she died.
•A man who intentionally bumped a car with his, and told the couple in the car he hit to kiss their last kiss before he killed them.
All but lost in the catalogue of brutality were the arguments of defense attorneys.
During an early hearing, Marshall spoke about corrupt judges, mentally retarded defendants allowed to represent themselves and police officers who tortured confessions out of suspects.
Then it was the prosecutor’s turn. Cook County assistant state’s attorney Paul Tsukuno took the parole board back to 1983 when Reginald and Jerry Mahaffey broke into a Chicago home and attacked a sleeping couple.
He told of the baseball bat that struck Dean Pueschel with such force that parts of his skull “looked like a crushed egg shell.”
He recounted how Jo Ellen Pueschel died hearing her son say to her, “Just lay down.”
Family members spoke next. “There is no doubt they are guilty and they deserve to die,” said Mary Heinrich, Jo Ellen Pueschel’s sister-in-law, spitting the last words directly at Marshall.
If defense attorneys wanted to talk about things like unreliable jailhouse snitches, prosecutors wanted the board, the media and ultimately the public to hear and see something else.
When it was their turn, family members transformed the hearing rooms into photo galleries of the dead. They pointed to the infants in the audience who would never know their grandfathers, the sons and daughters who grew up without parents.
On Wednesday, James Dudovick held up a picture of his daughter, Dawn, who was stabbed to death 14 years ago by William Peeples. He said he still sets a place for her every holiday. “We have life in prison, too,” he told the board.
Board members were not unaffected. “You could not sit in that room without feeling human and without feeling how vulnerable it is to be human,” said Arvin Boddie, who was removed from the panel after he criticized the hearings.
“It’s like going to six wakes a day for 21/2 weeks,” said Craig Findley, another panel member.
Death penalty opponents acknowledged they could not overcome the words of the family members.
“I do think that this is one of those occasions where there are some important pressing arguments about due process (and) fairness,” said Jane Bohman, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty. “But it’s hard to put that in the forefront in the face of what these families are saying.”
Marshall said the same “phenomenon” happens at trial. “Raw pain can obscure any meaningful assessment of the facts and the evidence.”
Boddie blamed defense attorneys.
“They had a plan to make a broadside attack on the death penalty,” he said. “It seems like they took an all-or-nothing strategy, and when you do that one of the things you can get is nothing. And they got nothing.”
Defense lawyers requested the hearings after Ryan said last spring that he would review every death penalty case before he leaves office in January.
Any chance the petitions would be a sterile paper battle between lawyers was lost when prosecutors and family members demanded to be heard.
In the end, Ryan will decide what to do with the stack of clemency petitions. He can take the confidential recommendations of the board or ignore them.
