On March 11—six days before the scheduled execution—Reverend Kantzavelos testified at a clemency hearing for Kokoraleis before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board asking for mercy as did Kokoraleis’s lawyers. Opposing clemency were the prosecutor who obtained the conviction and Lorraine Borowski’s parents.
It was an emotional affair.
“It has been just short of seventeen years that our daughter, Lorry Ann, walked the face of the earth for the last time because Andrew and his satanic crew decided to make sure of it,” Raymond Borowski declared. “And now it’s his turn to take that final walk, a more humane one than that which was afforded Lorry. We have suffered enough. All the years of pain, depression, and anger should end. We are anticipating some relief from the tremendous pressure we have encountered during these trying years.”
Borowski’s mother, also named Lorraine, said, “Thanks to Andrew Kokoraleis, our daughter’s voice cannot be heard today. Lorry cannot tell of the agony she endured, the pain she felt, the fear and trembling she sustained at the hands of this monster.”
DuPage County First Assistant State’s Attorney John Kinsella urged the board to reject Kokoraleis’s request for clemency. “Stephen King could not dream up crimes like this,” Kinsella said. He added that even John Wayne Gacy’s thirty-three murders paled before the “indescribably evil” torture and mutilations of the Ripper Crew.
Kathy Kelly, one of Kokoraleis’s lawyers, said that “just because he committed some of the murders does not mean he committed this one. That’s against our whole system of justice. You don’t execute someone for a crime they didn’t commit because they committed another crime.”
That argument had been rejected a day earlier by DuPage County Circuit Court judge Ann Jorgensen as well as Illinois Attorney General Jim Ryan.
Joining Reverend Kantzavelos in opposing the execution were Cardinal Francis George of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago and Joseph Tobias of the American Jewish Congress. They cited their opposition to the death penalty and Tobias noted that a legislative proposal to suspend executions for a year was still pending in the Illinois House of Representatives. “How fearfully awful if on March 17 Andrew Kokoraleis was executed and then the moratorium was put in place?”
At the end of the hearing, the board met and sent their recommendation to me—the vote was no to clemency.
Meanwhile, the business of being governor had to go on, even if it involved the mundane.
On Saturday, March 13, I was in Chicago marching in the 44th annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, walking down Dearborn Street with Mayor Richard Daley as well as my lieutenant governor Corinne Wood, Attorney General Jim Ryan, Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka, and Secretary of State Jesse White. The Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade is a must for any politician, and I never missed it.
The following day, I was back in Springfield for the 43rd annual Sons and Daughters of Erin Dinner at the Knights of Columbus Hall on Meadowbrook Road.
On Monday, March 15, the day began with Illinois Supreme Court Justice Moses Harrison II issuing a stay of execution until the US Supreme Court ruled on the pending petition for a stay. But later that day, as I was heading back to Chicago for the American Jewish Committee’s Judge Learned Hand award dinner, the Illinois Supreme Court voted four to three to overturn Harrison’s stay.
That night, while I was at a Republican fund-raising event in Chicago, I learned that Republican State Representative Dan Rutherford of Chenoa, Illinois, who I had known for two decades, had conducted his annual tour for legislators and the media at the two prisons in his district—Dwight Correctional Center and Pontiac Correctional Center. And, I learned that Rutherford had been listening at Pontiac when reporters for the Bloomington Pantagraph newspaper had spoken to Kokoraleis. When I spotted Rutherford at the fund-raiser, I sent an aide to ask him to come to my table. As he knelt on one knee beside me, I peppered him with questions, looking for any last-minute intelligence that might help me reach a final decision.
“Danny,” I said. “I understand you talked to Kokoraleis today. What was he like? Did he seem like he was remorseful?”
Rutherford explained that he had not spoken with Kokoraleis but was listening as the reporters conducted a brief interview with him. “I did not feel that,” Rutherford said. “I do feel that he had resigned himself to what appears to be inevitable.”
I nodded and Rutherford returned to his table. Not long after, I asked that he come back. Again, he knelt beside me. “Was he angry, Danny?” I asked.
“No,” Rutherford said. “He was calm.”
On Tuesday, while I was meeting with Heriberto Galindo, the consul general of Mexico, to talk about trade issues, Illinois Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles E. Freeman issued a statement saying that the court finished its formal conferences without ruling on a separate emergency motion to block executions filed by a group of legislators who opposed the death penalty.
“There are serious questions still to be resolved in connection with that petition, one of which is whether the petitioners have standing to bring the motion in this court,” Freeman said.
Later in the day, the US Supreme Court refused to hear Kokoraleis’s case. His appeals were finally exhausted.
Reverend Kantzavelos held a press conference at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral to issue a plea directly to me. “We appeal to the governor’s God-given conscience and humanity to commute the sentence from death by lethal injection to life in prison,” he declared. Joining him was Dennis Williams, who had been exonerated from death row in Illinois in 1996. “I’m glaring evidence you need a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois,” he said.
Meanwhile, at Pontiac Correctional Center, inmates on death row heard the sounds of loud police radios and chains clanging on the concrete floor. The guards had come to transfer Kokoraleis to the Tamms Correctional Center in one of the deepest regions of Illinois. He was ordered to get dressed and to pack up any medications he would need for the day.
“Are you sure about this?” Kokoraleis asked. He was then told, for the first time, about the US Supreme Court’s last decision.
His execution was back on.
Even so, Kokoraleis had good reason to believe I might halt it. He knew—everybody knew—that I was mightily affected by the high number of death row inmates who had been exonerated and freed from prison.
The numbers had become a mantra. Eleven had been exonerated. Eleven had been killed.
What kind of record is that?
For those exonerated, there had been new evidence clearing them or egregious mistakes at trial or incredibly bad defense lawyering. In addition, there were numerous media reports of inmates who were still on death row and claiming innocence because Chicago police detectives had tortured them to falsely confess to murders. This was real torture—electric shock machines hooked up to genitals, naked bodies pressed against scorching hot radiators, plastic bags pulled over their heads, and shotgun barrels placed in their mouths.
Kokoraleis was escorted in handcuffs and shackles onto a state plane and flown to Tamms. Until it was closed in 2012—because of state budget constraints—Tamms Correctional Center was unique among Illinois prisons. When it opened in 1995 with two hundred beds, it was the newest of the state's maximum-security facilities by more than one hundred years. Tamms was a state-of-the-art, computer-controlled penal showcase nestled against a hill on the edge of the giant Shawnee National Forest. The computer system allowed guards to control the prison without any physical contact with inmates—in effect, those confined here would have no human contact for the duration of their sentence. Tamms was among a handful of prisons nationwide that were constructed as “super-max” prisons, institutions designed to house the “worst of the worst”—gang leaders that persisted in running their criminal enterprises from their cells; chronic troublemakers; and inmates who posed a real danger to other inmates.
Kokoraleis, like all inmates arriving at Tamms, was processed through a reception area that resembled a warehouse loading dock and then was immediately escorted to solitary confinement.
Like all states with the death penalty, the Illinois Department of Corrections had developed a rigid set of procedures and rules to follow during an execution. Everything was planned down to the last detail. Witnesses, including members of the media, prosecutors, police, and relatives of the victims, would watch the execution through a window in front of the death chamber.
Corrections officials informed me that when the curtains shielding the window opened, onlookers would see the condemned lying on a gurney covered by a sheet pulled up to the neck. The order of execution—the one that was literally in front of me—would be read aloud. The inmate would be given an opportunity to say any last words. At the mandated time, a pump would start pushing a lethal cocktail of chemicals into the condemned. The first drug, sodium thiopental, would put the condemned to sleep. The second, pancuronium bromide, would paralyze the lungs. The third, potassium chloride, would stop the heart. Once the prisoner was declared dead, the curtains would close. The body would be removed and turned over to family members, if they wanted it. Unclaimed bodies were buried in a prison graveyard.
Corrections officials would then publicly report the basic facts about the execution and repeat any last words stated by the condemned. Any other details, including the reactions of witnesses, had to come from the witnesses themselves, if they chose to speak to the media.
This clinical approach had worked well for prior executions—even the media circus at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois, when John Wayne Gacy was executed for killing thirty-three young men and boys. The execution of Kokoraleis, if I let it go ahead, would be the first to be conducted at Tamms.
And so now, it was in my hands. The court appeals were exhausted. Only a gubernatorial order could delay the execution. I had never in my life felt such a weight on my shoulders.
In the end, after considering everything both sides brought to the table and after praying about it—I am a Methodist—I concluded that Kokoraleis deserved the sentence he got. I signed his death warrant because it was the right thing to do. I focused on the crime more than on the person or the process. I decided that Andrew Kokoraleis was not the case for stopping the death penalty.
Still, after all that had transpired in the prior ten weeks and all that had been said during the extensive and often heated discussions, I think there was more than a little surprise among my staff when I ordered the release of a statement saying that I would not stand in the way of Kokoraleis’s execution.
At the same time, I remained troubled about all the exonerations of innocent men who had been sentenced to death. The word “maybe” resonated constantly, although I had concluded there was no possible way Kokoraleis was innocent.
My statement, issued on March 16, 1999, was concise and direct.
I must admit it is very difficult to hold in your hands the life of any person, even a person who, in the eyes of many, has acted so horrendously as to have forfeited all right to any consideration of mercy.
I have struggled with the pleas of our clergy and others who ask that I commute or stay the execution of Andrew Kokoraleis. I have struggled with the anguish that I know is part of each and every day for the family and friends of his victims; those who look for justice.
I have struggled with this issue of the death penalty and still feel that some crimes are so horrendous and so heinous that society has a right to demand the ultimate penalty.
To me, all the evidence at hand indicates that Andrew Kokoraleis is guilty of the gruesome murder of Lorraine Borowski. A jury has decided his fate according to the law of the land. His repeated attempts to appeal the verdict and his sentence have been considered and rejected many times by state and federal courts over the last 16 years.
Accordingly, I will not stand in the way or alter the verdict or sentence handed down in this case.
Kokoraleis spent much of his last day praying, fasting, and calling a few select friends to tell them goodbye. As he talked to one of his brothers, he prayed and wept. He wrote a letter to Reverend Kantsavelos thanking him for his support and expressing hope that God would use his execution to end capital punishment.
That evening, as the prison staff prepared him for the short trip from a holding cell to the death chamber, he still wondered if the telephone would ring.
The telephone was on the wall of the death chamber at Tamms. It was a telephone that I could call to stop the execution at any time—even if Kokoraleis was strapped on the gurney and hooked up to the intravenous feed that would deliver the fatal mix of drugs. I had the number on a piece of paper in my pocket.
The execution was scheduled for midnight. I usually go to bed around 10:00 p.m., but that night Lura Lynn and I had a late dinner in the private quarters at the Executive Mansion in Springfield. We turned on the television and prepared to stay up. It was a sober evening. We spoke little, each keeping private counsel with our thoughts. Lura Lynn knew I was tense and anxious. I tapped the remote control as if I were sending Morse code, flipping through the cable channels from my easy chair. I kept hoping to find something that would distract me, but it was hopeless. My thoughts kept going back to what was going on in Tamms.
I told my staff I did not want to make a live appearance before the media. I made it clear that deciding to kill a man—even a serial murderer—was not a heroic act that should be trumpeted to score political points. I knew that if I didn’t stop the execution and Kokoraleis was executed, the media would focus on Tamms. If I let him live, all eyes and ears would shift to where I was in Springfield. I would not make a last-minute call to the execution chamber.
A little before midnight, I called Newtson, who had remained in his office at the Capitol. He said corrections officials told him they would call him and give a verbal report after the execution.
“Do you think I did the right thing, Bob?” I asked. “Was this the right thing to do?” Even at the last minute I found myself reaching for assurance.
“He was a bad guy, George,” he said softly. “This is the right decision.”
Midnight passed. Ten minutes. Fifteen minutes. Thirty minutes. Forty-five minutes. The wait was excruciating. I wondered if something had gone wrong.
Finally, a few minutes before 1:00 a.m., the telephone rang.
“It’s over,” Newtson said. “He died about thirty-five minutes after midnight. There were no problems.”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Before he went under, he apologized to the Borowski family and said that the kingdom of heaven was at hand,” Bob said. “And then it was over.”
“Thank you, Bob,” I said.
“Get some sleep, George,” he replied. “It’s all over.”
I said goodnight and hung up. I knew Bob was wrong. For me, it was just the beginning.
This had been one of the most difficult periods and one of the most difficult decisions of my life. I didn’t get any sense of satisfaction or relief. Andrew Kokoraleis was a very, very bad guy. But I still was unsettled. There was the vague feeling—which would become very powerful over time—that this execution did not advance anything. It certainly did not bring his victims back. It was revenge, pure and simple.
And I figured that in the future not all the death penalty cases that would reach my desk were going to be like this one. Not all the cases would have the sort of overwhelming evidence that convinced a jury to sentence Kokoraleis to death.
I went to bed, but barely slept.
The eleven people who had been exonerated kept running through my mind. The evidence in those cases had led to convictions and death sentences too. But then, later, along came evidence that pointed to their innocence. How long does that take? How long must one wait?
I was certain that those eleven men exonerated and removed from death row were not going to be the last.
That night was the most emotionally draining night of my life. In the end, it was up to me to be the person who figuratively had to pull the switch.
That, I thought, was too much to ask of one person. Down the road, I would discover this wasn’t just a one-night experience. And I learned that when you’re responsible for putting a person to death, it sticks with you.