In the year 2011, Illinois’ Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill that abolished capital punishment or by its more known name, the death penalty.

Before the bill was signed, around 13 men were killed on death row when they were later proven innocent. The state of Illinois had problems like this in the past, but now they have done something about it. National Public Radio said, “As he signed the bill, Quinn called it

the “most difficult decision” has had ever made as governor. But he said the best step forward for Illinois was to be done with the death penalty altogether.”

Only 27 states still use the death penalty like Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Utah and Nevada. But there are 20 states that do not uses it at all, like New Mexico, Alaska, Maine and Washington state. The only outliers are the ones that are governor imposed like Wyoming and Pennsylvania.

Since 1972, there have only ever been 20 inmates that have been released from death row in the United States. But

since January of 2013, the total amount of people who have been on death row is around 3,150. Out of that 3,000, there is no way to get the exact number of those people who are innocent. But no system is perfect.

The death penalty is out-dated and not completely unbiased. There is always a chance that the government can execute innocent people based on opinions and false evidence. A great example would be the Anthony Porter vs Alistory Simon. There is a documentary, A Murder in the Park on Netflix, that if you are interested, is based on the real story of how a inmate was able to manipulate people from prison, to get himself out of death row and framed someone else in the process.