Two years before Blago is up for re-election
Posted on 05/05/2004 5:42:38 PM PDT by Land_of_Lincoln_John
Anthony Mertz had been on death row 411 days when the typed, brief postcard landed in the Rolling Meadows mailbox of his murder victim's family.
Stamped with Gov. Rod Blagojevich's signature, it was the response -- though not at all the one Cindy McNamara wanted -- to a letter she wrote the governor April 5, rehashing the pain of her daughter's slaying and urging him to lift the moratorium on executions.
She'd hoped for a personal response. Maybe a phone call.
Instead, the card simply told her the letter had been received, thanked her for expressing her concerns and noted Blagojevich looks forward to serving McNamara "and the people of Illinois."
To McNamara, who says she thinks of her daughter every moment of every day of her life, the card -- one you may get back if you'd requested your roads be widened, she said -- was a stinging slap in the face.
"I don't even think (the letter) landed on his desk. It's like it's not important. It is important to me," McNamara said. "Do we have so many murders in this state that they're so blase?"
Such cards are protocol, spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said, adding McNamara's letter now is being reviewed by the governor's legal counsel. She promises a personal response.
But it also "literally adds insult to injury," said state Sen. Peter Roskam, a Wheaton Republican. "I think she deserves a response from the governor and not a mail-merge letter. That's just common courtesy."
Mertz was convicted in February 2003 of killing 21-year-old Shannon McNamara and mutilating her body in her off-campus apartment at Eastern Illinois University. He was sentenced to death by a downstate Coles County jury -- the first inmate on the state's recently emptied death row.
More than a year later, little has happened. His case has not yet been heard in the Illinois Supreme Court, and history says it will be years -- perhaps even two decades -- before the appeals process is exhausted.
Because of that, McNamara's pleas to the governor may not yet be timely, said state Sen. Ed Petka, a Plainfield Republican and death penalty supporter.
Petka said he believes executions will never happen under Blagojevich's administration, and the current moratorium means McNamara has "joined the long list of people whose loved ones were murdered where justice has simply been delayed," he said. And "as a result of that delay in justice, justice is denied."
The state has approved death penalty reforms since Mertz's sentencing, but Blagojevich has said he's not certain the system is fixed yet.
"He thinks it's the responsible thing to do to take the time to ensure there's no chance we're going to put an innocent person to death," Ottenhoff said. "That requires time."
McNamara, a longtime supporter of the death penalty who was thrown into the limelight after Shannon was murdered, says she simply wants to know the governor has seen her note.
She wants a chance to talk with him, to tell of her frustration that there's DNA evidence pointing to Mertz and he still has years of appeals ahead.
She wants Blagojevich to look at each of the death row cases on his own -- there are only two there now -- and consider lifting the moratorium.
Then "this trash will be the first one" to be executed, she said, referring to Mertz -- a man whose name she says isn't even worth uttering. "I don't think I'm asking for the world."
Two years before Blago is up for re-election
I didn't vote for him John and I know you didn't either. Maybe by the next election we can come up with a candidate not named Ryan.
One of the dimmest of the dims. He's probably too busy running the trucking companies and other businesses out of the state to answer this womans letter.
Not a member of the inner circle.
BTW have you heard whether OBAMA is a muslim or an animist.
Once a musselman always a musselman, why do you think the want john kerry and spain back.
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