McSweeney, R-Barrington Hills, said “eliminating the death penalty was a terrible mistake,” according to Capitol News Illinois. “It has been a complete failure.”

Pointing to recent mass shootings in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas —�both of which still have capital punishment on the books —�McSweeney said “The time to act is now, because the death penalty is a deterrent that we need to protect our citizens. No one can argue the state of Illinois is a model for how to fight crime.”

Ohio killed 28 people from 2009-2018, according to the Death Penalty Information Center; Texas has killed 135. As of April 1, Ohio had 141 people on death row; Texas had 225.

McSweeney acknowledged past problems with wrongful convictions and said dramatic improvement in DNA testing will enable the kind of safeguards that might engender the political support he’ll need to advance his proposal.

Nationwide, 166 people sentenced to die since 1973 were later exonerated. Two men, North Carolina’s Charles Finch and Florida’s Clifford Williams, were set free this year after 43 years on death row. Both cases involved official misconduct and mistaken witness identification.

The DPIC said it’s difficult to catalog how many of the 1,501 people executed since 1976 might’ve been innocent, but highlighted 15 cases with strong evidence of innocence, said others suggest more than 40 such instances.

The FBI’s 2016 Uniform Crime Report said Southern states accounting for more than 80 percent of executions also had the highest murder rate, while Northeast states accounting for fewer than 1 percent of all executions had the nation’s lowest murder rate.

Prosecuting crimes that carry a death sentence can cost three or four times more than those where the stiffest penalty is a life sentence, depending on the jurisdiction.

In other words, McSweeney wants Illinois to enact a stiffer penalty that puts more strain on an underfunded criminal justice system, isn’t proven to act as a crime deterrent and opens the door to using taxpayer dollars to commit uncorrectable, fatal errors.

So what’s gained? How does giving the state the power to kill, rather than simply permanently imprison, make Illinois better?

“This one will have a lot of opposition,” McSweeney predicted.

Only from those with common sense.

Call Me Young Gun

In June, state Sen. Sue Rezin, R-Morris, announced her plans to challenge U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, a first-term Democrat, in the 14th Congressional District.

On Friday the National Republican Congressional Committee rolled out its 2020 Young Guns program by announcing 43 “On the Radar” candidates who will “work towards specific goals and meet benchmarks throughout the election cycle to ensure their campaigns remain competitive, well-funded and communicative within their districts,” according to a release.

Only three Illinois candidates thus far “have met the minimum threshold in campaign organization and show potential to achieve greater status in the program as the cycle progresses,” per the Young Guns website: 6th District candidate Evelyn Sanguinetti, lieutenant governor under Gov. Bruce Rauner, and two of Rezin’s competitors: state Sen. Jim Oberweis and businessman/youth sports coach Ted Gradel.

Sanguinetti is 48, Gradel is in his early 50s, Rezin is 56 and Oberweis is 73. Only Gradel is a political novice. Perhaps the NRCC could’ve chosen a more apt moniker, but the Young Guns terminology does lean into a certain core GOP constituency. Rezin may eventually meet NRCC standards, but for now it seems odd to see someone with her pedigree off the committee’s radar.

This Day in History

On Aug. 20, 1986, a former U.S. Marine arrived for work at the post office in Edmond, Okla., then used three semi-automatic pistols to shoot 20 coworkers, killing 14, before taking his own life.

Time magazine weighed in the following week: “In the past two decades, random mass slayings have become increasingly common in the U.S. It is a phenomenon peculiar to the late 20th century: a single twisted soul slaughtering near or total strangers, acting on a vague, incomprehensible motive.”

The phenomenon remains prominent in the early 21st century. Motives often are explicit, though obviously unjustified. Humans have long sought the power to kill. That such sprees are celebrated anywhere remains chilling.