ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 17, 1996 TAG: 9601170057
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SPRINGFIELD, ILL.
SOURCE: Associated Press
An abused wife who had demanded she be put to death for killing her husband was spared Tuesday by Gov. Jim Edgar hours before she was to become the second woman executed in the United States in at least 20 years.
Guinevere Garcia apparently had had a change of heart: ``Thank God that this has happened,'' her lawyer quoted her as saying after Edgar commuted her death sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole.
Garcia, 37, was to have been executed shortly after midnight for shooting her husband during an argument that grew from a botched robbery.
Death-penalty opponents, including Bianca Jagger, had campaigned for clemency over Garcia's objections, arguing that she had a harrowing life that included alcoholism and sexual abuse in childhood and prostitution as a teen-ager.
As late as last week, Garcia had angrily denounced efforts to win clemency, telling the state Prisoner Review Board, ``This is not a suicide. ... I am responsible for these crimes.''
Edgar, a Republican who hadn't overturned a death sentence in five years in office, said the facts of Garcia's crime didn't justify her execution. He cited evidence that she apparently didn't plan to kill her husband.
``Horrible as was her crime, it is an offense comparable to those that judges and jurors have determined over and over again should not be punishable by death,'' Edgar said in a statement.
The governor acknowledged that he was acting against Garcia's wishes, but said: ``It is not the state's responsibility to carry out the wishes of a defendant. It is the state's responsibility to assure that the death penalty continues to be administered properly.''
Garcia's attorney, Manos Kavvadias, said Garcia never really wanted to die but was ``drained'' after losing an appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court last year. ``She was ready to accept the sentence as it was,'' he said.
After prison officials told her of Edgar's decision, ``she was relieved - like a big weight had been removed from her,'' Kavvadias said.
Edgar rejected arguments that Garcia was a victim of battered woman syndrome. His aides insisted neither the international spotlight nor Garcia's gender influenced his decision.
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