SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - An Illinois House committee this morning unanimously approved legislation to crack down on lawyers, investigators and others milking the state for exorbitant expenses in death-penalty trials, the result of a Post-Dispatch expose’ last year.

The newspaper reported in the fall that Illinois’ Capital Litigation Trust Fund (a tax-funded pot of money that defense teams can draw from when defending death-penalty cases) was paying massive, questionable fees to private investigators and expert witnesses — hundreds of dollars an hour for things like packing their suitcases and driving to the courthouse.

Under current law, there was nothing the state could do about it. The measure that just passed committee (HB869) would change the law to allow the state Treasurer’s office to review the submitted bills and send them back to the trial judges to reconsider. As it currently stands, the Treasurer receives the bills, but is legally prohibited from doing anything other than just paying them.

The legislation sponsor, state Rep. Arthur Turner, D-Chicago, a House deputy majority leader, credited the Post-Dispatch as he presented the bill to the committee. It passed unanimously with almost no debate. When a committee member asked where there was room on the bill to add himself as a co-sponsor, Turner quipped: “I’m certain there’s room - if not, there will be after today.”

(The story last year pushed a button with lawmakers here because they’d already been burned once before by defense teams drawing from the death-penalty fund. A few years back, they changed the law after it was revealed that Minnesota attorney John Paul Carroll was charging his full legal fee for the time he spent packing his car and driving to Illinois. Our latest story made it clear that others had since found ways around the new reforms, and that the abuses had actually grown worse. Safe to say folks in Springfield were a little teed.)

The measure now goes to the full House.