By Brad Palmer
Carbondale, IL – A southern Illinois attorney certified to handle capital murder cases says the abolition of the death penalty in Illinois will influence how lawyers approach murder cases. Tim Capps of Carbondale says the average cost of a death penalty case was more than 500-thousand dollars. He states attorneys were able to use the money available in the Capital Litigation Trust Fund to pull out all the stops. His worry is that now the trust fund is gone and counties will incur the costs of murder cases, clients won't get the same type of representation:
"If you needed the top Neuro-psych guy from New Mexico, fly him in. If you needed the world's foremost authority on false confessions, fly him in .We're not going to see that and I think its hard to say that on some of these serious murder cases that people are going to get the same level of representation that they had before."
Capps previously worked for the Capital Trial Assistance Unit in Belleville that assisted lawyers defending death penalty cases.
Governor Pat Quinn signed legislation in March abolishing the death penalty in Illinois. The new law goes into effect today (Fri). Former Governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois in 2000. Ryan cleared death row before leaving office in 2003.