CHICAGO – State Senator Omar Aquino (D-Chicago) issued the following statement in response to Governor Bruce Rauner’s proposal to reinstate the death penalty on limited terms, introduced in his amendatory veto to House Bill 1468:

“Governor Rauner’s amendatory veto is deeply troubling and reprehensible. In 2011, Illinois took a tremendous step forward and progressed beyond the deeply flawed use of capital punishment, which has been proven to be racially-biased and ineffective in deterring crime. It goes without saying that the death penalty has no place in a civilized society. Attaching this regressive proposal to a piece of compromised public safety legislation is the first of many scrambling attempts by Governor Rauner to score cheap political points with the ultra-right voters who rejected him in his party’s primary.”

HB 1468 would have implemented a 72-hour wait period for assault weapon purchases.