David Erickson, the top aide to Cook County State's Atty. Dick Devine, said the office supports Ryan's moratorium. Roughly half the death sentences in Illinois involve Cook County cases. The commission that Ryan plans to appoint should look at every aspect of the capital system, beginning with whether Illinois has too many categories of crimes that are punishable by death, Erickson said. Our position would be that if you're going to do an examination of the entire system, then you really do the entire system.
Nobody wants to put innocent people on Death Row.
Tribune staff writers Ray Long, Christi Parsons, Ryan Keith and Robert Becker contributed to this report.