Republican governor: reinstate death penalty for mass and cop killers

SPRINGFIELD, Ill: Eight years after Illinois abolished the death penalty, the state’s Republican governor has proposed reinstating the punishment for mass killers and people who gun down police officers.

Gov Bruce Rauner tied the death penalty plan to gun restrictions favoured by Democrats who control the Legislature.

“I don’t believe that this is anything other than very good policy, widely supported by the people of Illinois,” Rauner said. “These individuals who commit mass murder, individuals who choose to murder a law enforcement officer, they deserve to have their life taken.”

The last execution to be carried out in Illinois was in 1999, before Republican Gov George Ryan issued a moratorium and later emptied death row, believing the system too fraught with mistakes to be tenable. Illinois had executed 12 people in the decades since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, but 13 people had been freed because of questions about their guilt.

Democratic Gov Pat Quinn officially abolished the death penalty in 2011.

Rauner, an unpopular first-term governor facing a tough road to re-election in November, used his amendatory veto authority to add capital punishment and other provisions to the gun bill, including a ban on bump stocks, the rifle-firing speed accessory used in a mass shooting in Las Vegas last year. He also proposed giving the courts the authority to take guns from people deemed dangerous.

Democrats pushed back. Senate President John Cullerton, of Chicago, said in a statement that “the death penalty should never be used as a political tool to advance one’s agenda. Doing so is in large part why we had so many problems and overturned convictions”, he said.

Democrats have introduced several proposals to curb gun violence – in response not only to mass shootings elsewhere in the US but also because of the February 13 fatal shooting in downtown Chicago of police Commander Paul Bauer. The bill now goes back to the House. For Rauner’s plan to become law, the legislature must approve his changes. If lawmakers don’t act, the whole package will expire without becoming law. The legislature could also vote to override Rauner’s changes.

Steve Brown, spokesperson for House Democrats, said the first task will be to determine whether Rauner exceeded his authority.