Next month, the State of Illinois will execute an innocent man . . . unless public pressure stops it. Peoria States Attorney Kevin W. Lyons refuses to allow DNA testing of evidence which almost certainly would prove the innocence of convicted murderer Willie Enoch, the next man scheduled to be executed by Illinois.
The reasons behind Lyons' refusal to allow DNA testing are not hard to see. A recent federal study of DNA testing in cases of convicted rapists produced evidence that found 20% of the "criminals" were in fact innocent, and in another 20% the results were inconclusive. The testing itself is virtually foolproof in linking traces of human contact -- blood, sweat, hair, etc. -- to specific individuals.
"If you were guilty and you call for DNA testing, you would have to be crazy," explained Dennis Williams, "because the rate of error is one in a million. That would be like putting nails in his own coffin." Williams was part of the "Ford Heights Four" who were proven innocent -- in part because of DNA testing -- and released from prison last year after 18 years on Illinois's death row.
The DNA testing issue in Enoch's case, highlighted in recent reports on Channels 5 and 9, and the Chicago Tribune, focuses especially on perspiration stains on a bloody shirt found outside the house of the victim, Armanda "Kay" Burns.
Armanda Burns was a Peoria hospital employee with whom Enoch had been acquainted for several months. Burns worked in the Peoria Methodist Hospital housekeeping department with Enoch's brother, Bobby.
On the late evening of April 22, 1983, Enoch went to visit his brother Bobby at the hospital, only to find out that Bobby was off that night. Burns and Enoch struck up a conversation in Burns' office, where several other housekeeping employees were gathered. Burns' shift was about to end, so she asked Enoch to wait and walk with her toward her apartment two blocks away.
When Enoch and Burns approached her building, Burns spotted Derek Proctor, her boyfriend, waiting for her out front. Proctor and Burns started to argue, at which point Enoch said he left.
The next morning Enoch awakened to hear Peoria police officers at his door. He was arrested and has been in jail ever since.
Several aspects of Enoch's case highlight a pattern of police and prosecutorial misconduct, not to mention a cavalier attitude towards finding out the truth of the crime:
Unfortunately, in 1983 no tests were available which could prove that Enoch was innocent. But today's DNA testing could irrefutably clear him by showing that it was not Enoch's sweat on the blood stained shirt found outside of the victim's house, and that it was not his semen found on the victim's underclothes. State's Attorney Lyon's only reply to the request for DNA testing is that he "seeks the imposition" of the death sentence on Enoch "without delay."
The Due Process Clause of the Constitution protects the right of an individual convicted of a crime to a meaningful appeal. Yet Enoch has never been able to get a full appeal of the numerous errors made at his trial because his court appointed attorney, Kevin Lyons, failed to file a routine motion after the trial. Because of this legal "glitch," Enoch's death sentence has been upheld without a full review of the many injustices committed at the trial. Now that Enoch's last appeal has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court, his last hope to avoid execution on May 21 rests with a grant of clemency from Governor Edgar.
If past experience is any guide, truth and facts alone will not decide whether Willie Enoch gets the new trial he deserves. In 1993 the U.S. Supreme Court found in the Texas case of Leonel Torres Herrera that proof of Herrera's claim of "actual innocence" was not by itself sufficient grounds for judicial relief. In spite of his innocence and after ten tortuous years on death row, Leonel was executed May 12, 1993.
Here in Illinois, the state was close to executing The Ford Heights Four, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez -- until activism outside the court room forced the courts to reassess their cases and free them. As in Enoch's case, police and prosecutorial misconduct railroaded these innocent men to death row, and Illinois is loath to admit that once again it might wrongfully execute a Black or Latino man whose only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and not be able to afford a decent lawyer.
The case of Willie Enoch highlights the fact that the death penalty is racist and biased against poor and working people. As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas put it, "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata in this society."
African Americans are 12% of the U.S. population, but are 40% of prisoners on death row. Although Blacks constitute 50% of all murder victims, 85% of the victims in death penalty cases are white. A comprehensive Georgia study found that killers of whites are 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence than killers of Blacks.
A recent book, In Spite of Innocence, notes that since 1900 there have been 416 documented cases of innocent persons who have been convicted and given a death sentence. In 23 of these cases, the person was executed.
Only public pressure will guarantee that Willie Enoch won't become number 24.