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National Victims Organizations Speak Out on HJR 80 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE National Organization of Victim Assistance (NOVA) and Parents of Murdered Children (POMC) issue a joint resolution calling on the Illinois General Assembly to notify victims and their families of the HJR 80 committee proceedings. View the letter to the committee here.
A Press
Release Issued by FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 5, 2006 HJR80 – Has Illinois Forgotten Crime Victims? When Chicago residents Nancy Bishop Langert, her husband and unborn child were murdered in 1990, and Renee Rondeau was murdered in 1994 - all separate but equally horrifying crimes - their families fought long and hard for justice. Neither family sought revenge. In fact, many members of both victims’ families have openly opposed the death penalty, even for their loved ones’ killers. Indeed, all these families have ever wanted was justice, and assurances that these killers would be locked up permanently, in order that the same horror not be visited on someone else. Both cases were hard-fought, but in the end the State of Illinois gave the convicted killers life sentences without the possibility of parole. With that, the Bishop and Rondeau families have picked up the pieces of their lives and devoted these ensuing years to helping other victims of crime. The horror of the devastating losses, the murder trials and sentencing of the killers was over and done with. Or so they thought. Now the Illinois General Assembly has passed House Joint Resolution 80 (HJR80), a study whose purpose is, among other things, to consider the possible reducing prison sentences for those offenses which, under current law, would be subject to terms of 30 years or more, including “Natural Life” (no parole or early release.) To make matters worse, if the study leads to legislative changes, the new sentencing guidelines may well be applied retroactively. This makes the possibility of reintroducing a parole system in Illinois, something the state has not had since the “truth in sentencing” reforms of the 1980s. The families of Nancy Bishop Langert and Renee Rondeau find even the possibility of this notion not only disturbing, but deeply traumatizing. States Elaine Rondeau, Renee Rondeau’s mother, “We adamantly oppose any effort to lessen the sentences for murderers. Indeed, if anything, sentences for murderers should be lengthened in such a way as to make them permanent. This in our view is the only way that we can hope to eliminate the scourge of murder in our society.” Nancy Bishop Langert’s sister, Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins concurs; “When I heard that there was going to be a study into issues affecting long-term imprisonment in the state that had not even made a plan to notify the thousands of potentially affected victims, including myself, whose loved ones’ killers might have their sentences reduced as a result, I could not sleep for weeks and I was genuinely re-traumatized. Every victim’s family has a right to know that the Illinois General Assembly will be holding these hearings and considering reducing the sentences of many prisoners in the Illinois Department of Corrections.” ###
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