Author: Patricia McMillen

When I received an email yesterday asking for people to testify on January 26 before what may be the last (ever) public hearing of Illinois’ Capital Punishment Reform Study Committee, I hesitated for a minute.  “I’m not a reformer, I’m an abolitionist,” I thought.  What could I possibly say?  And worse: What Would Other People Say?  I could hear those voices already:  What’s a nice abolitionist like you doing in a place like this?

In fact, as a confirmed death penalty abolitionist of a few years’ standing, it’s abundantly clear to me that there is no way to reform Illinois’ death penalty: no amount of additional oversight, right of appeal, or protection of ancillary rights (such as the right not to be tortured into a false confession)–what the late Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, dissenting from the Court’s 1994 decision in the Texas death penalty case, Callins v. Collins, called “tinker[ing] with the machinery of death”–can, in my view, make a wrong punishment “better,” let alone right.

On the other hand, though I disagree fundamentally with the State’s presumed power to impose legal death on a prisoner, my attendance, as an observer, at much of the 2007 trial of Rodney Adkins, now on Illinois’ death row for the burglary and murder of Catherine McAvinchey in 2003, gave me insight into some of the specific wrongs which occur in Illinois’ enforcement of that unjust power.  To name only a few, these include the practice of employing “victim advocates” which report to the State’s Attorney (and therefore are unlikely to “advocate” in favor of victim family members who, as an unknown number of them do, disagree fundamentally with the State’s system of retributive justice);  the harassment I experienced as a court watcher in what should have been a public forum; the observable racial imbalance in the Maywood courtroom where Adkins was tried and convicted; and the equally observable inability of Adkins’ trial counsel to impress upon him the necessity of taking his own trial seriously, possibly an effect of this defendant’s lifetime of drug abuse and lack of education.  These factors were sufficient, at least in my mind, to make imposition of the sentence of death particularly egregious in the Adkins case, notwithstanding what I’d also characterize as a nearly flawless performance by the arresting officers, the State’s Attorney who took Adkins’ videotaped confession, and even the prosecuting trial attorneys, who seemed quite competent and professional in their presentation of the voluminous evidence of Adkins’ guilt.

After outlining these topics informally with one of the CPRSC members, I now find myself  persuaded to give my testimony to the Committee, and I’m even planning to meet next week with another Friend who (as she also attended part of the Adkins trial, as an observer) I hope will also testify, or at least file written testimony with the Committee.  (At this point I’m not sure how to do that, but if others are interested, I will post details.)  And I hope that other reformers/abolitionists will join us in offering testimony at this hearing, which will take place 9-5 in a conference room off the atrium (lower level) food court in the Thompson Center (Lake and LaSalle Sts., Chicago). NOTE that outright abolition statements will not be welcome (while some members of the CPRSC are abolitionists, the sole charge of the committee is to study “reform,” not abolition).