A former Illinois Death Row inmate will be among the panelists Wednesday at a free discussion in Colorado Springs sponsored by death penalty opponents.

Randy Steidl, former Illinois death row inmate

Randy Steidl served 17 years, 3 months and 3 weeks in prison for the 1986 murders of a newlywed couple in Paris, Ill.

He was freed in 2004, after an appeals court found Steidl probably would have been acquitted by a jury had his attorney put on a better case, according to the Northwestern University Center for Wrongful Convictions, which waged a lengthy battle to overturn Steidl’s convictions.

Joining him will be the Rev. Bill Carmody of the Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs; Lisa Cisneros, the executive director of Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which sponsored the event;  Rosemary Harris-Lytle, of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Colorado Springs branch of the NAACP; and the Rev. Roger Butts, of High Plains Church Unitarian Universalist.

The talk was planned as part of World Day against the Death Penalty, which fell on Halloween this year.

Colorado’s most recent execution was Oct. 13, 1997, when Gary Lee Davis died by lethal injection.

Davis was convicted of the abduction, rape and murder of a neighbor, Virginia May.

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Lance Benzel

Legal Affairs reporter

The Gazette

lance.benzel@gazette.com

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