Commentary
Here’s what passes for “beyond a reasonable doubt” in a gang murder case
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Rob Warden asks: Should a gang-related murder conviction stand solely on recanted identification testimony of a single gang member?
Commentary
The death penalty didn’t play in Peoria
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Federal officials tried to big foot Illinois prosecutors, and try Brendt Christiansen in federal court so that he might face the death penalty. A jury in Peoria rejected that effort, as Injustice Watch co-founder Rob Warden writes.
Commentary
A Supreme Court justice’s legacy in jeopardy
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Justice John Paul Stevens, who died at 99, believed that government should be neutral. In 2019, the question is whether that model can still survive.
Commentary
Peoria death penalty case is, in a word, nuts
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Rob Warden writes that seeking the death penalty against Brendt Christensen is likely only to bring anguish to the families of both the victim and the killer, and to cost taxpayers considerable money. And in addition, writes Warden, the odds are against Christensen actually being executed.
Commentary
In defense of how judges are chosen — and how they rule — in Illinois
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The voting is by secret ballot, and judges cast their ballots in a process that is independently administered by the Administrative Office of the Illinois Courts — an arm of the Illinois Supreme Court.
Commentary
A prosecutor’s epiphany on capital punishment
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A prosecutor with long record of winning death sentences has concluded that capital punishment is inherently arbitrary and should be abolished.
Commentary
For Hamlet, to be or not to be guilty — that is the question
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If jurors in staged performances can’t consistently come to the same result — what does that say about real life?
Commentary
What we know about mistaken IDs in sexual assault cases
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Victims of sexual attack can easily make mistakes in trying to identify the stranger who committed the assault. That has nothing to do with the identification by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.
Commentary
Progress slow in prison reform; politics seems the reason
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The corrections department offers no answer on whether any inmates have benefited from the new state law that encourages early release for prisoners who qualify. Politics appears to be blocking an answer.
Commentary
Problems of Prisoner Review Board go beyond voting records, attorney writes
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The author, an attorney active in prison reform, writes, “The only thing worse than the way parole works in Illinois is to have no parole.”