Ill. death penalty bill headed back to legislators

CHICAGO -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich, under pressure from police organizations, sent a bill aimed at overhauling the state's death penalty system back to the legislature on Tuesday after vetoing a portion that would punish officers who commit perjury.

Lawmakers promised to override the governor in the fall veto session and the Senate president accused the governor of caving in to pressure from the state Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed the Democrat in the 2002 election.

Blagojevich aides said as late as Friday that the governor planned to sign the bill. They said he was troubled by the provision targeting police officers, which caused the delay.

Making their case

Both the president and lobbyist for the FOP spent much of the weekend making their case to the governor's staff, talking with aides "all the way up," said Allen Bennett, the union's director of government relations.

The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police also met with the governor's staff over the weekend to lobby against the decertification procedure, said Laimutis Nargelenas, the group's manager of government relations.

Senate President Emil Jones, D-Chicago, said the governor "shouldn't bow down to the wishes of the FOP, who wanted no changes in the criminal justice system." He also predicted lawmakers would override the veto.

Deputy Gov. Bradley Tusk said Blagojevich signed a veto message supporting everything in the legislation except the perjury provision, which would take away badges of police officers if the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board found they had committed perjury in a homicide case.

He acknowledged the FOP and other groups lobbied the governor, but denied the governor caved in to pressure from them.

"Different people talk to the governor, to me, to the staff," Tusk said. "The governor makes his decision based on what is right and best for the state."

Another chance

The amendatory veto sends the entire matter back to the state legislature for consideration during its fall session, where if legislators do not take action, the measure will not become law.

The bill's main sponsor, Sen. John Cullerton, D-Chicago, said he expected the legislature to override the governor's veto. Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the bill in their spring session.

Blagojevich was on vacation Tuesday and made his action known through a news release. It was a contrast to two weeks ago, when the governor held a news conference to sign a related reform law making Illinois the first state to mandate that police tape interrogations and confessions in murder cases.

"You don't have ceremonies for amendatory vetoes," Cullerton said.

Tusk said the governor, a former prosecutor, thought the perjury provision was unfair to police because it lowered the standard of proof for wrongdoing by an officer.

"If a police officer is believed to have committed perjury, that officer should be tried like anyone else. They shouldn't be treated any differently," he said.

FOP President Ted Street applauded the veto at a Springfield news conference.

The state FOP's endorsement of Blagojevich was the first time since 1990 it had endorsed a Democrat for governor. During the campaign, Blagojevich opposed taping interrogations of murder suspects, but eventually came to support the practice.

The state's struggles with the death penalty have made headlines nationwide for the past three years and the proposed reform package is the centerpiece of an effort to transform the state's flawed capital punishment system into a national model.

The legislation would allow judges to rule out the death penalty in cases that rest largely on a single eyewitness or informant, allow the state Supreme Court to overturn death sentences it deems "fundamentally unjust" and require juries to consider more mitigating factors before imposing the penalty.

Flaws in Illinois' death penalty system have been in the national spotlight since 2000, when former Gov. George Ryan halted executions after 13 men on death row were found to have been wrongly convicted.

Ryan emptied death row before leaving office in January, pardoning four men he believed were innocent and commuting the death sentences of 167 others to life in prison.