The death penalty debate: Illinois has just become the 16th state to abolish the death penalty--a decision that has reignited the long-running battle over capital punishment.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: Cover story

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Johnnie Baston was 20 years old when he killed a 53-year-old man during a robbery at a store in Toledo, Ohio, in 1994. The store owner, a South Korean immigrant, was shot execution-style in the back of the head.

Baston, who already had a juvenile record as a thief, was found a few days later with the murder weapon and stolen merchandise from the store. He was convicted the following year.

Last month at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Baston was put to death for his crime. A day after his execution, in another Midwestern state, Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat, signed legislation making Illinois the 16th state to ban capital punishment (see map, p. 15).

"Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it," said Governor Quinn.

Illinois's move revived the long-running debate about the death penalty and the many questions it raises: Should the government put people to death? Does the death penalty deter future crime? Does it discriminate against minorities? What about the possibility of mistakenly executing innocent people? Conversely, are some crimes so horrific--mass murders or acts of terrorism, for example--that any punishment short of the death penalty is simply inadequate?

And why do so few industrialized democracies, aside from the U.S., still have the death penalty? (Ninety-five countries have abolished it, including most of Europe, and many other countries that have it on the books don't actually use it.)

Fewer Executions

"Illinois's experience of trying to fix the death penalty, and finding it can't be done, sends a real message to other states that are also grappling with the same problems," says Shaft Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA, a group that opposes capital punishment. "It's a real turning point in the conversation about the death penalty in the United States."

But Kent Scheidegger, legal director for the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which supports the death penalty, disagrees.

"I think it's unfortunate because there are going to be cases where the crime really cries out for the death penalty, and it won't be available," Scheidegger says. "There are times when life in prison without parole is just not a sufficient punishment."

Over the last decade, the number of executions in the United States has declined from a high of 98 in 1999 to 46 in 2010, most of them in Texas and Ohio. And the legislatures of three other states--Connecticut, Maryland, and Montana--are also currently considering abolishing the death penalty.

"There's been a change in mood about the death penalty," says Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. "There's a lot more caution."

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued several rulings restricting the death penalty (see box, p. 15). In 2002, the Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel or unusual punishments," bars the execution of the mentally retarded.

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In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the Court ruled that capital punishment for juvenile offenders is unconstitutional. Christopher Simmons was 17 when he and a friend robbed...