Death row inmate provides insight into capital punishment

By Barbara Ortutay

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Ronald Kitchen was sentenced to death 10 years ago for murdering
five people, but he still maintains his innocence. He spoke
Saturday evening of his experiences with Chicago’s criminal
justice system to a crowd of more than 70 people.

Audience members listened in silence as Kitchen’s voice,
coming from a speakerphone, filled the Viewpoint Conference Room.
He said his confession was forced out of him by former commander
Jon Burge of the Chicago Police ““ who has since been forced
into early retirement for torturing men during interrogations
““ and three other police officers who beat and tortured
him.

“To kill me, an innocent man, to prove to the world that
we have to be tough on crime ““ it’s just not
right,” he said.

The event, titled “Live from Death Row,” was
sponsored by the UCLA chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union
and by the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, and sought to
publicize a nationwide effort to place a federal moratorium on the
death penalty.

Calling it racist, classist, cruel and unusual punishment, and
an ineffective deterrent to violent crime, Shalini Ramachandran of
the campaign and others speaking at the event condemned capital
punishment.

“The plain truth is, there are no rich people on death
row,” Ramachandran said. “Ronald Kitchen spent his
entire life savings, $40,000, and he didn’t even get adequate
representation.”

She added there is a growing concern about errors in the system,
and that at least 23 innocent prisoners have been executed this
century.

Those in support of capital punishment emphasize victims’
rights and say it prevents murderers from killing again.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan placed a statewide moratorium on the
death penalty in January, after 13 people on death row were found
innocent in the past 13 years. Ryan, a Republican supporter of the
death penalty, called the system “fraught with error”
and said in January that no one will be executed until he can be
certain that no innocent man or woman is facing lethal
injection.

Cyrus Naim from UCLA’s ACLU said until recently he was a
supporter of the death penalty, but it was the Illinois moratorium
that changed his mind.

“(The death penalty) is on the American radar the way it
has never been before,” he said, speaking about what he said
was a growing consciousness of the issues surrounding capital
punishment.

Kitchen is one of Chicago’s “Death Row 10,” a
group of men who were allegedly beaten and tortured by Burge and
other officers during their confession and subsequently convicted
and sentenced to death. He was allegedly handcuffed to a wall,
beaten with a telephone book and a phone receiver, and struck in
the groin so that he was urinating blood and forced to wear a cast
on his groin.

His trial took 10 days and the all white jury spent three hours
deliberating his fate, he said. Kitchen, who is African American,
said he no longer has faith in the criminal justice system.

“If they have killed somebody innocent, they will do it
again,” he said. “It will happen again, it has happened
again.”