Ex-Death-Row Inmates Seek MoratorThe New York Times
AP/New York Times
Thursday, April 6, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Darby Tillis got off death row when his fifth trial on two murder charges finally yielded an acquittal. A DNA test freed Ronald Jones from a death sentence for raping and murdering a young mother. Gary Gauger escaped execution when an appeals court overturned his conviction for slitting his parents' throats.
The three wrongfully convicted men are among 13 released from Illinois' death row since 1987 -- more people than have been executed by that state since the Supreme Court allowed the reinstatement of capital punishment.
The lopsided record prompted the state's governor to call in January for a moratorium on executions in Illinois until problems with the system could be sorted out.
On Wednesday, Tillis, Jones and Gauger came to Congress to seek a nationwide halt to capital punishment until stronger safeguards are in place to ensure innocent people aren't executed.
``You cannot bring a man back from the grave after you find those errors,'' Tillis said.
Legislation sponsored by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., would immediately suspend all executions by the federal government and the states for seven years. To get Justice Department permission to resume executions, states would have to provide access to DNA testing to everyone on death row who asks for it.
Other pending measures in the House and Senate also seek protections for capital defendants but do not call for a moratorium.
Illinois Gov. George Ryan released a statement praising Jackson's bill as a step toward ``ensuring that everyone accused of a crime is treated fairly before the law.''
Though there has not been a federal execution since 1963, the number of people put to death by the states is increasing. There are 3,600 people on death rows nationwide.
Meanwhile, 87 have been freed since 1973, according to the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center.
Gauger was convicted in his parents' murders on their Illinois farm in 1993. Police told him they had evidence linking him to the crime and he made what he said was a hypothetical statement about blacking out that was used as a confession. A state appeals court overturned his conviction in 1996, and two gang members from Wisconsin have since been charged with the murders.
Jones, a homeless, alcoholic panhandler, confessed to and was convicted for the 1985 killing of a mother of three. He later recanted, saying he made up a story so police would stop beating him. He was released from death row last year after DNA testing proved he didn't do it.
Tillis and his co-defendant, Perry Cobb, were arrested for the murder of two men during a 1977 robbery at a Chicago hot-dog stand. Because of a lack of physical evidence and dubious witness testimony, it took three trials to send them to death row.
Their convictions eventually were overturned, another trial ended in a hung jury, then a judge acquitted the men in 1987 -- after they spent more than nine years in jail.
``Death row is a horrible shock,'' said Tillis, now a minister who formed a group to help former death-row inmates readjust to society.
Anthony Porter, once two days from being executed, was released from prison late last year. He had been on death row for 16 years when several Northwestern University journalism classmates helped prove another man committed the double murder for which he was convicted. One of those students, Shawn Armburst, said today's scattershot approach to fixing mistakes must be changed.
``That's not how the system is supposed to work,'' Armburst said. ``Twenty-one-year-olds are not supposed to be responsible for finding the innocent people on death row.''
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