Article from Reason by Zuri Davis.

An Illinois lawmaker has filed a bill to reinstate the death penalty in hopes that it will deter violent crime, such as mass shootings.

Rep. David McSweeney (R–Barrington Hills) filed HB 3915 last Thursday. Co-sponsored by Rep. Andrew Chesney (R–Freeport), the bill aims to reinstate the death penalty, which was abolished in the state by former Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat, in March 2011.

“The intent of the General Assembly in enacting this Act and reenacting the death penalty is to have the death penalty serve as a deterrent to violent crime with the specific goal of reducing mass shootings, serial killings, and gun violence,” the bill reads. “The General Assembly has confidence in the ability of crime laboratory biochemical testing, including DNA testing, to reduce or eliminate wrongful criminal convictions in Illinois, including, but not limited to, cases involving the death penalty.”

“Illinois itself saw 12 people exonerated from its death row before the state ultimately did away with this broken, big government failure. It would be foolish to think the system would run any better were it to be reinstated. Lawmakers should instead focus on programs that actually work to deter crime; the death penalty isn’t one of them,” Hannah Cox, national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, tells Reason.

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: By St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s Office (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons