Does Illinois have a death penalty? Is there a death penalty in Illinois?

Illinois is one of 21 states that have abolished the use of the death penalty.

Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois abolished the death penalty. On March 9, 2011, more than a decade after the state imposed a moratorium on executions out of concern that innocent people would be executed by a justice system that had wrongfully convicted 13 men.

Quinn also commuted the sentences of the remaining 15 inmates on Illinois’ death row. They are now sentenced to life in prison.

Until 1928, Illinois used hanging as a method of execution. The last person executed using this method was Charles Birger, who was publicly executed the same year.

In 1994, the state executed serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men in Cook County a suburb of Chicago between 1972 and 1978, by lethal injection.

The last man executed in Illinois was Ripper Crew member Andrew Kokoraleis in 1999. .