Pardon requests for exonerated people don’t belong on back burner

The vagaries of the prison justice system caught our eye final week as a clemency listening to was held for a convicted killer — whereas pardon requests for wrongfully convicted individuals languish in limbo.

The Tuesday clemency listening to was for Robert Turner, one among three males who used a automotive outfitted with a police-like flashing crimson gentle and posed as law enforcement officials to tug over Bridget Drobney of Downers Grove in 1985. The lads kidnapped Drobney, who was driving alone to a household wedding ceremony reception. She was raped and her throat was slit in a Macoupin County cornfield. 

Turner tried to flee being convicted as probably the most culpable participant within the crime by falsely attempting to pin the blame on one of many different males, Daniel Hines. Based on court docket information, he additionally tried to shift blame to a cellmate, Harold Meyers, saying Meyers planted a razor, a wire and a knife-like instrument discovered on Turner shortly after he was arrested.

In 1990, in an obvious try and keep away from a stiff re-sentencing, Turner invented testimony that made him the star witness towards Rolando Cruz, resulting in Cruz’s wrongful conviction at a retrial for the 1983 homicide of Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville. Cruz subsequently was exonerated, however not till 1995. Turner additionally wrote a letter to prosecutors providing to testify towards seven different dying row inmates.

Turner was sentenced to dying, however that was modified to life in jail in 2003 when then-Gov. George Ryan commuted all dying sentences to life in jail. In 2011, Illinois abolished the dying penalty.

But, because the Illinois Prisoner Evaluate Board thought of Turner’s clemency petition final week, we heard nothing concerning the pardon request, for instance, from Gordon “Randy” Steidl, who in 1977 was the 18th particular person to be freed after having been sentenced to dying in Illinois.

Steidl spent 17 years in jail, 12 of them on dying row, for a 1986 downstate double homicide he didn’t commit. After he was exonerated, he turned an advocate for abolishing the dying penalty, showing earlier than quite a few state legislatures as they thought of doing so and likewise talking at schools and communities of religion. Illinois and different states would possibly nonetheless be sentencing defendants to dying based mostly on scant proof with out Steidl’s dogged and considerate testimony.

However final week Steidl informed us he isn’t holding his breath ready for a pardon, which he has mentioned he needs to clear his household identify. He first requested for a gubernatorial pardon in 2002, 4 governors in the past.

“It’s laborious to get an innocence-based pardon, even in case you are harmless,” he mentioned.

The Prisoner Evaluate Board has been the goal of political struggles in recent times, alternately accused of being too liberal or too conservative as its membership has shifted. A yr in the past, the 15-member board was in disarray because the state Senate refused to substantiate Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s appointments, leaving the board with out a quorum. In his race towards Pritzker final yr, Republican gubernatorial candidate Darren Bailey made a problem of the board, saying Pritzker’s appointees had been comfortable on crime.

Turner actually has a authorized proper to petition for clemency, which might let him out of jail. His supporters say he has modified himself whereas behind bars and that nearly 40 years in jail is a enough sentence. Drobney’s household opposes Turner’s launch. The Prisoner Evaluate Board will make a confidential suggestion to Pritzker, who has the final phrase in these issues.

We hope Pritzker doesn’t get so distracted by different requests to the purpose that those that deserve innocence-based pardons stay missed.

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