Capital punishment has been repealed in the U.S. state ofIllinois since 2011.
Illinois used death by hanging as a form of execution until 1928. The last person executed by this method was the public execution ofCharles Birger the same year. After being struck down byFurman v. Georgia in 1972, capital punishment was reinstated in Illinois on July 1, 1974, but voided by theSupreme Court of Illinois in 1975. Illinois officially reinstated capital punishment on July 1, 1977. On September 8, 1983, the state adoptedlethal injection as the default method of execution in Illinois, but theelectric chair remained operational to replace lethal injection if needed.
On May 10, 1994, the state executed serial killerJohn Wayne Gacy by lethal injection, who sexually assaulted, tortured and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 inCook County (a part of metropolitan Chicago). The last man executed in Illinois wasRipper Crew member Andrew Kokoraleis on March 17, 1999. Another man condemned in Illinois,Alton Coleman, was executed in Ohio.
On January 11, 2003,RepublicanGovernorGeorge Ryan blanket-commuted the sentences of all the 167 inmates condemned to death, and pardoned four of them, a gesture that his opponents attribute to the fact that he was rendered ineligible by his unpopularity and charged with conspiracy, racketeering, and fraud.[1]
Democratic GovernorPat Quinn signed legislation on March 9, 2011, to abolish the death penalty in Illinois effective July 1, 2011, and commuted the death sentences of the fifteen inmates on Illinois' death row to life imprisonment. Quinn was criticized for signing the bill after saying that he supported the death penalty during the2010 gubernatorial campaign, after which he defeated the Republican candidate with 46.8% of the vote.[2]
In 2018, then Republican GovernorBruce Rauner called for the reintroduction of the death penalty for those convicted of killing police officers. This was opposed by state lawmakers and Rauner was subsequently defeated by DemocratJ. B. Pritzker.[3]
