In the News

Lake County News Sun, January 15, 2011

Two men charged with murdering their own children but ultimately exonerated in the slayings called Friday for an end to the death penalty in Illinois.

Jerry Hobbs and Kevin Fox each could have landed on Death Row if they had been convicted of murdering their young daughters in notorious area killings.

At a news conference Friday in Oak Brook, both men expressed fears that an innocent person could mistakenly be executed if the death penalty remains the law of the land.

“There’s too many gaps in the system itself,” said Hobbs, who was freed in August after spending more than five years in Lake County Jail awaiting trial for the 2005 killings in Zion of his 8-year-old daughter, Laura, and her friend, 9-year-old Krystal Tobias.

Fox, of Joliet, who spent about eight months in the Will County Jail before being cleared of the 2004 drowning death of his 3-year-old daughter, Riley, also said he views a death sentence as offering killers an escape from a harsher sentence.

“It’s an easy way out for them,” said Fox, adding that he favors what he views as a tougher punishment for condemned killers: Forcing them to serve life sentences in prison.

Illinois legislators have passed a measure to repeal the state’s death penalty, but Gov. Pat Quinn has yet to say whether he intends to sign the measure into law.

Fox and Hobbs also said DNA testing by private laboratories should be required in murder cases to ensure innocent people aren’t mistakenly convicted.

Both men were cleared after DNA evidence excluded them as the suspects.