2 sides to Gov. Ryan

http://www.suntimes.com/news/mcnamee/624955,CST-NWS-mcnamee29.article

2 sides to Gov. Ryan

THE CHICAGO WAY | Why is it so hard to believe he was both sincere about the
death penalty and a crook?

October 29, 2007
BY TOM McNAMEE Sun-Times Columnist

I asked an editor in the Sun-Times newsroom, a guy I respect: What do you
make of George Ryan's moratorium on executions?

"A cynical public relations stunt," he said.

There you go. You hear that a lot.

>From the moment former Gov. Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in
>Illinois, shortly before he left office in 2002, hard-eyed realists across
>the state had laughed off any possibility that his motives were pure, that
>he acted sincerely out of a troubled conscience.

Ryan's conscience wasn't troubled, they said. But Ryan, himself, was in deep
trouble, soon to be indicted for a string of crooked dealings while he was
governor and secretary of state. He seized on the death penalty issue, they
said, in a shameless attempt to divert attention from his legal problems,
and, perhaps, in a bid to salvage his legacy.

To which I've always replied: How boring.

People -- even a by-the-numbers Republican like Ryan -- are so much more
complicated than that.

My own belief is that Ryan was and remains utterly sincere in his opposition
to the death penalty. But whether he knows it or not, he never would have
done the soul-searching to get to that point, or felt the freedom to do
something about it, had U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald not been chasing
him down.
Unseen forces shape us

Why do any of us believe what we believe? It's almost never just a matter of
obvious self-interest.

"There are always analysts who come up with a primitive kind of Marxism, who
say that all we do is governed by rationally calculated self-interest," said
Andreas Glaeser, an associate professor of sociology at the University of
Chicago. "But I find that too primitive. I suspect your hunch is right about
somebody like Ryan. I have met politicians, and I was shocked to see the
human being in front of me."

>From his study of the secret police in formerly communist Eastern European
>countries, Glaeser said, he's found that the beliefs people claim to hold
>are heavily shaped by forces they don't even see.

"You have to look at their social networks," he said. "Their social
contracts, experiences in their jobs, who talks to whom, and what can you
talk about when you talk."

And when those unseen forces shift, so do our supposedly deepest
convictions.

In the case of Ryan, almost everything in his life and career would have
discouraged him from questioning the death penalty -- even to himself --
until he became governor. As a Kankakee Republican, he moved almost
exclusively in circles where a belief in the death penalty was a given, and
where expressing doubts was political suicide.

But as governor, it became Ryan's job to personally review the last-minute
appeals of prisoners about to be executed, and by all accounts the job
weighed heavily.

"It was gut-wrenching for him," recalled his former press secretary Dennis
Culloton. "He was emotionally wrought."

And then in late 1999, Culloton said, the Chicago Tribune ran a series of
articles about former Death Row inmates who had been wrongly convicted on
the basis of bad evidence, bad witnesses and prosecutorial misconduct -- and
it pushed Ryan over the edge. What if one of those wrongly convicted men,
Ryan asked, had been executed on his watch?

It was during a back-office meeting with aides, Culloton recalled, that Ryan
first entertained the idea of declaring a moratorium on executions. He began
the meeting by repeatedly asking, "What do I do? What do I do?"

"Nowhere was there talk of the political calculation," Culloton said. "Not
once did he say something like, 'Will this get me off the front page of the
scandal sheets?' "
Also agonized over abortion

Do I believe Culloton's spin? Yeah. Because this isn't the first time I've
heard about Ryan struggling to reconcile his politics and his personal
morality.

When Ryan was running for governor, as Chicago-based journalist Jim Merriner
reported in the Sun-Times in April, he also agonized over his stand on
abortion. While Ryan was officially opposed to abortion except in cases of
rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, he secretly harbored doubts.

One day during the campaign, he met with a woman who had aborted a fetus
that had no brain. The woman then had gotten pregnant again and given birth
to a healthy boy, whom she had brought along to her meeting with Ryan.

Ryan, according to Merriner, listened to the woman's story and looked at her
baby and started crying. He turned to an aide, Scott Fawell, and said,
"Scott, I'm pro choice."

"No, you're not!" Fawell said.

"Yes, I am!"

And so on.

Ryan remained opposed to abortion, but pro-life activists never fully
trusted him.
'I can see now'

Ryan's harshest critics say he declared the moratorium and commuted the
sentences of Death Row inmates for bald political gains. But at that time,
it's probably fairer to say, nobody really knew what the political fallout
would be.

"The rather divided reaction of Illinoisans about his commutations was a
shock to most observers who had expected a firestorm of protests," said the
novelist and lawyer Scott Turow, who served on a panel that studied the
state's death penalty procedures. "He did what he did, in my judgment,
knowing that he might leave office loathed and face a jury as a complete
pariah. His actions on the death penalty throughout were dispassionate and
courageous."

Courageous, yes. Dispassionate, not completely.

Ryan's own legal problems, during which he came to see himself as a victim
of an overzealous prosecutor in a rigged system of justice, undoubtedly
caused him to feel greater compassion for wrongly accused men and women
everywhere -- even on Death Row.

I am told that he has said to friends: "I can see how this happens."
Still guilty

By now, you must be thinking I'm the world's biggest George Ryan fan, so let
me be clear:

I think Ryan is guilty. Overwhelmingly.

I think Ryan is a shabby old-school pol who sold out the whole state,
sparing only his leeching pals.

And I think Ryan should go to prison as scheduled Nov. 7 -- no more delays.

But I also know it's possible for a man to fly high and fall low at the same
time.

That, as Shakespeare said, is the human condition.

And before going off to prison, George Ryan should have won the Nobel Peace
Prize.

Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" column runs Mondays.

Ryan: 'I still believe'

August 22, 2007

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

'We are staying strong," former Gov. George Ryan told Sneed shortly after learning his conviction on corruption charges had been upheld by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals, 7th Circuit.

"We have a large and strong family, and we all understand what is happening," Ryan added. "Faith is a big part of our life and it continues to be now. And I also have a lot of faith in my counsel."

Ryan and his extended family stayed behind closed doors Tuesday at his home in Kankakee, which was surrounded by the news media, as they wondered whether the ex-Illinois governor would have to report to federal prison by Friday morning.

» Click to enlarge image

Three judges agreed former Gov. George Ryan could remain free until the full court takes up the matter.
(Scott Stewart/Sun-Times file)

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"We're fine, Mike. Really we are," said Ryan's wife, Lura Lynn, who met Ryan in high school and married him in 1956.

Later in the day, the 73-year-old Ryan was informed that the appellate court had allowed him to stay out of prison pending further appeal.

"I just got the good news," he told Sneed. "I always felt and hoped that there would be justice -- and I felt it today with the judges' ruling. I still believe in the system. ...

"Yes, I do feel some relief, and I guess we'll know what happens during the next two weeks."

Autographing books about mansion

For the most part, this summer has been a quiet and busy one for the Ryans, who have been staying active while awaiting word on Ryan's appeal since his conviction on fraud and corruption charges in April 2006.

This summer, Ryan weeded the garden at his modest home, planted hostas in the yard, took small Illinois road trips with Lura Lynn, hung out with his children and his grandkids and kept a close ear on his squeaky porch swing.

He and Lura Lynn also traveled to the Chicago Book Fair and hit the Kankakee Library to autograph books on the Springfield executive mansion, which were co-written by Lura Lynn to raise funds for the mansion's upkeep.

The books, 10,000 in all, vanished after Gov. Blagojevich was elected and were later resurrected by Lura Lynn from an Ohio warehouse.

Speaking against capital punishment

But it is Ryan's anti-death-penalty crusade that has been his constant focus.

"Gov. Ryan, who placed a moratorium on the death penalty heard around the world, has kept up his crusade to abolish the death penalty and spoken to countless groups which found him profoundly inspirational," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

"He has also been helping a prominent Italian photographer, Nicola Majocchi, put together a documentary, book and photo exhibition on the American death penalty," said Warden.

It highlights the lost years of exonerated prisoners. The project reportedly will debut this fall in New York City.

"Remember," said Warden, "he was the first governor in the nation to declare a moratorium on executions. And before leaving office in 2003, he granted blanket clemency and cleared out Illinois' Death Row."

'Chicago Tribune' Comes Out Against Death Penalty -- And Few Protest

ILLINOIS:

'Chicago Tribune' Comes Out Against Death Penalty -- And Few Protest


For several years now, the Chicago Tribune has published numerous articles
-- many of them award-winning -- exposing the many faults in the
administration of capital punishment in its home state and the nation.
Some of them helped inspire a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois.

All the while, the paper's editorial page continued to support capital
punishment. That changed 3 weeks ago with an editorial opposing the death
penalty. Relatively few newspapers have gone that far and public opinion
continues to back capital punishment -- although support drops when people
are given the option of "life without parole."

Today, the Tribune's public editor, Timothy McNulty, reports that his
paper's surprise editorial has drawn surprisingly little black from
readers. Here is the 1st part of his column.

**

Individuals change their minds often, but a change of mind for a
newspaper's editorial position, especially one that has stood since at
least 1869, is far less common.

When the Tribune's editorial board came out in opposition to the death
penalty three weeks ago, the newspaper might have expected a rise out of
readers and politicians previously aligned with traditional thinking that
favored capital punishment.

"The evidence of recent years argues that it is necessary to curb the
government's power," the editorial declared, overturning its previous
arguments. "It is time to abolish the death penalty."

There was barely a ripple, a few heartfelt letters to the editor, a few
calls, and almost all accepting and welcoming the new attitude.

Abolition of the death penalty isn't on the political radar at the moment,
and if any readers were surprised, they may have assumed the newspaper
already opposed the death penalty. 8 years ago, reporters Maurice Possley,
Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong began detailing the abuses, and their
reporting led then-Gov. George Ryan to impose a death-penalty moratorium
in 2000. Gov. Rod Blagojevich has maintained it since.

Tribune writers continue to lead on national stories about death-penalty
abuses. Cornelia Grumman, an editorial writer, won the Pulitzer Prize for
her series of editorials on the injustice of the death penalty.

While here and in other states the same arguments are put forward by both
sides of the debate, the Tribune's editorial board looked at them afresh,
but also with the overwhelming evidence that the death penalty is not
applied fairly and is too open to mistakes that cost innocent lives.

(source: Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor. He is
co-author, with Robert Jay Lifton, of the book about capital punishment,
"Who Owns Death?", publihsed in 2000)

The Nobel Prize . . .

Michael Sneed

The Nobel Prize . . .

April 1, 2007

BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist

Sneed hears the Nobel Prize nomination of former Gov. George Ryan for his opposition to the death penalty has been accepted by the Nobel committee -- which has narrowed its list of thousands of nominees to 181.

It is the fifth time Ryan, who is still awaiting the outcome of his appeal for a mistrial, has been nominated by University of Illinois law Professor Francis Boyle.

Pssst!

Word is fedejral indictments against two top Illinois political players are this/close to hitting the headlines.

Death penalty moratorium takes political courage

March 1, 2007

Death penalty moratorium takes political courage

By Michael Tackett, Post Bulletin

WASHINGTON -- While Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were engaged in
the first official hissy fit (the technical term) of the 2008 presidential
campaign, another Democrat was actually engaged in a matter of important
public policy.

Just to recap: Clinton was furious because Hollywood mogul David Geffen
ridiculed her and former President Bill Clinton in an interview with Maureen
Dowd of The New York Times on the very day that Geffen was hosting a
fundraiser for Obama that reportedly brought $1.3 million to his campaign.
Before his conversion to Obama, Geffen had raised about $18 million for the
former president.

The spat led to several days of coverage in a not-so-deep search for deeper
meaning about the state of the race and the state of the Clintons, which, by
the way, undoubtedly will be the campaign's ongoing soap opera subtext.

Meanwhile, across the country in Annapolis, Md., another public drama was
playing out, and in this case, the stakes were not money, but life and
death.

Martin O'Malley, the youthful new governor, made an emotional plea to a
state Senate committee to repeal the death penalty in Maryland.

That is one long march from the scene at a 1988 presidential debate when
Michael Dukakis was pilloried for giving a lawyerly answer to a hypothetical
question about whether he would impose the death penalty on a man who had
raped and murdered his wife. Dukakis' dispassionate rejection of capital
punishment became a ready emblem for the Republican narrative that Democrats
were soft on crime.

From that point on, most Democrats with higher ambitions rushed to be seen
as state-sanctioned Grim Reapers. None did it with as much flourish as
then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who jetted back to his state just before
the New Hampshire primary to preside over the execution of Ricky Ray Rector,
a brain-damaged man who told prison officials he wanted to save the dessert
from his last meal until after his execution.

Few Democrats since have been willing to take forceful public action that
would make it appear as if they were not tough on criminals. In fact, it was
not until a Republican, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, imposed a
moratorium on the death penalty that any movement to repeal capital
punishment statutes gained significant traction. In fact, O'Malley cited
during his testimony the 18 Death Row inmates who have been released in
Illinois after their innocence was proved.

O'Malley has been on the short list of rising Democratic stars for several
years. Telegenic, smart and the leader of his own Irish band, O'Malley's
March, he was mayor of Baltimore before being elected governor last
November. Before that, he had been chosen to speak at the Democratic
National Convention in 2004 and fortunately for him, in a very forgettable
time slot, given a delivery that dripped with emotion far more than
sincerity.

His push to repeal the death penalty is perhaps his highest-profile move
since taking office, and one that carries abundant political risk,
particularly because he is seen as a politician with national ambitions.

But on this issue, O'Malley is resolutely righteous, making a moral and
theological argument as much as a political or legal one to support his
thesis that the death penalty is neither a "just punishment" nor an
"effective deterrent" to murder.

"Notwithstanding the executions of the rightly convicted, can the death
penalty ever be justified, then, as public policy when it inherently
necessitates the occasional taking of a wrongly convicted and innocent
life?" he said. "Is any one of us willing to sacrifice a member of our own
family -- wrongly convicted, sentenced and executed -- in order to secure
the execution of five rightly convicted murderers? And even if we were,
could that public policy be called 'just'? I believe it cannot."

He was just getting wound up.

"Individual human dignity is the concept that leads brave individuals to
sacrifice their own lives for the lives of strangers," O'Malley said.
"Individual human dignity is the truth universal that is the basis of all
ethics. Individual human dignity is the fundamental belief upon which all
laws of this state and this republic are founded. And absent a deterrent
value, I truly believe that the damage done by our conscious communal use of
the death penalty to the concept of human dignity is greater than the
benefit of even a justly drawn retribution.

"

It was a gutsy approach, even in a heavily Democratic state. And O'Malley
will find out if his risk is rewarded. Maybe Geffen would bankroll the
movie.

---

Source : Post Bulletin (Michael Tackett is the Chicago Tribune's Washington
Bureau chief. His e-mail address is mtacket@ttribune.com.)

http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?a=2861
02&z=12

Shutting Down Death Row

Shutting Down Death Row
Illinois' death-penalty reforms may presage a fairer criminal-justice system.

By Jean M. Templeton
Issue Date: 07.01.04

Change in the criminal-justice system is a rare thing. Change in death-penalty policy is even more rare. Yet Illinois undertook a comprehensive reassessment of its death-penalty system recently, passing reforms that will have far-reaching impacts on how murder trials are handled in the state -- and that could serve as a model for reform in the rest of the country.

Following the review, 11 men were released from death row, and the furor over the death penalty only escalated after the 1999 release of death-row inmate Anthony Porter. Porter had been convicted of a double murder, believed to be a holdup gone bad, in a Chicago park in 1982. A mere 50 hours before Porter's execution, his lawyers made a last-ditch attempt to save him by asserting new questions about his mental competence. His execution was stayed, and in the intervening months, journalism students working in cooperation with a private detective located another man who confessed to the murder. Porter was released.

The case, and the flood of media attention that accompanied it, was enough to raise doubts about the death-penalty system even among death-penalty supporters, including George Ryan, then the Republican governor of Illinois. In early 2000, Ryan took the bold step of declaring a moratorium on executions in the state until a panel of experts, the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, could make recommendations about how the system might be improved. In 2002, after two years of intensive study, the blue-ribbon commission released a report making 85 recommendations for improving the state's capital-punishment system. Late last year, the Illinois Legislature adopted many of the recommended reforms, and current Governor Rod Blagojevich has pledged to continue the moratorium until the reforms' effectiveness can be assessed.

While both prosecution and defense supported many of the commission's recommendations, there were two that proved controversial. The first required videotaping of police interrogations; the second involved changes in lineup procedures to make eyewitness identifications more reliable. Both recommendations were initially opposed by law enforcement, and it took determined advocacy by legislators before they were included in last year's reforms. Now that they are law, they may produce far-reaching effects on the investigation of homicides in the state.

Because we often believe that our eyes don't deceive us, we tend to think that eyewitness accounts of a crime are the very best evidence of what actually occurred. Certainly juries often find it persuasive. Unfortunately, as extensive investigation by psychologists has shown, eyewitness evidence may not be especially reliable. The Illinois commission therefore recommended broad changes in the procedures for police lineups.

In a lineup, an eyewitness to or victim of a serious crime views a group of people or photos at the police station. The crime suspect is among the group, and the witness is asked whether he or she can identify anyone in the lineup. Generally speaking, the law requires that the other people in the lineup bear some resemblance to the suspect's description so that the suspect won't stand out. If the witness or victim identifies one of the group, a report is made of the identification.

Research shows, however, that witnesses often choose the person in the lineup who looks most like the person who committed the crime. In other words, they make a relative judgment. This process may produce a correct identification if the actual suspect is present. But if he or she is not, many people will simply select the person who most resembles him or her. This selection of the wrong person, what social scientists call a "false positive," can lead to the prosecution of an innocent person.

In an effort to eradicate false positives, Iowa psychologist Gary Wells and others have developed an alternative identification procedure called a "sequential lineup." In this procedure, the eyewitness looks at each person in the lineup separately, without observing the others in the group. The eyewitness then makes more of an absolute judgment about that person before observing other people or photos in the lineup. This process reduces the rate of mistaken identifications without substantively reducing the number of accurate identifications.

A majority of the Illinois commission recommended adopting sequential lineups. However, because existing methods had already met with court approval, some commission members had reservations about mandating a procedure radically different from that which was already in place. But one legislator with fairly conservative views on the death penalty argued persuasively for the change.

Representative Julie Hamos, a Democrat, represents a relatively liberal district along the north-shore suburbs of Chicago. Early in her legal career, she served as a policy adviser for the Cook County state's attorney's office, the largest prosecutor's office in Illinois. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a conservative law-and-order Democrat, was the state's attorney in those days. Hamos herself supported the death penalty for heinous crimes.

Elected to the legislature in 1998, Hamos represents a district that includes many opponents of the death penalty. Troubled by the number of men released from death row in Illinois and affected by activism among her constituents on the issue, she began to modify her own views. Hamos also came to realize the frailties inherent in eyewitness testimony after conversations with Wells.

In 2002, she introduced a bill to require the use of sequential lineups. Prospects for passage seemed dim. But when the "Report of the Governor's Commission on the Death Penalty" was released in April of that year with a similar recommendation, Hamos renewed her efforts, working quietly among the Democratic leadership to ensure that the lineup proposals were on the table.

The measure failed that year, but as the legislature began its journey toward death-penalty reform in 2003, Hamos persuaded the leadership to include it again. In response to law-enforcement concerns, the proposal was limited to development of a pilot program that would enable the procedures to be tested in several police districts in the state. When that legislation passed in November 2003, sequential lineups were part of the bargain. By July 1, 2004, the Illinois State Police was to have identified three pilot police departments, one of which must be the city of Chicago, in which sequential lineups and photo spreads will be tested. A report on the program's effectiveness will be filed with the Illinois General Assembly by September 1, 2005.

Not every homicide case involves eyewitnesses, however, which often leaves police the task of interrogating a suspect in order to try to obtain a confession. A person's confession of murder is powerful evidence to prove guilt, and under the law it must have been made voluntarily. Where there is some dispute over whether the statement is voluntary, a defendant may seek to prevent the use of the statement as evidence against him or her.

As the debate over the inadequacies of the Illinois death-penalty system evolved, there were those who charged that some death-row convictions were based on confessions that were not true or not voluntary. Final statements in which a defendant confessed had been videotaped in the Cook County state's attorney's office since 1999. While videotaping these confessions has proven useful to demonstrate what the suspect actually said, critics complained that the program failed to capture the questioning process itself, in which undue pressure may be put on suspects to agree with the police version of events. Reformers in Illinois, including the governor's commission, pushed for the videotaping of the entire interrogation process.

Videotaping the process is important because academic studies suggest that there are circumstances under which people will confess falsely. One group known to do so are the mentally retarded, who sometimes confess in order to please authority figures. In 2000, a young Chicago man named Corethian Bell was arrested for killing his mother. Bell, described as mentally ill and borderline retarded, gave a videotaped confession that he had, indeed, killed his mother. Subsequent DNA testing, however, suggested that another man might have been guilty of the crime, and Bell was released from jail and charges against him dropped -- despite his confession.

More troubling are confessions coming from those who may have been unduly pressured or abused. In the late 1980s, complaints began to surface that a group of Chicago police officers, led by then–Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, had brutalized suspects in order to obtain confessions. The allegations went beyond rough treatment during arrest to claims of systematic torture. Suspects alleged that they were beaten, shocked with electrical currents, and threatened with being shot in order to compel confessions. Although Burge denied the charges, he was fired in 1993 for physical brutality against a suspect. None of the police officers alleged to have been involved faced criminal charges. In 2002, almost 10 years later, a special prosecutor was appointed to look into the allegations. Media reports suggest that the number of possible cases of torture has now risen to more than 100. The special prosecutor's report is expected sometime this year.

Proponents of videotaping interrogations point to these incidents to support their case. Videotaping the entire process, they say, would protect suspects from abuses and police officers from unfounded charges of brutality. Yet in Illinois, the proposal failed to gain wide acceptance among police departments. Officials said it would interfere with police work or that it would be too costly. Bills to implement some form of videotaping of interrogations were introduced in the Illinois Legislature in 1999, but they never got a hearing. The Illinois House revisited the issue in 2001, and it did pass provisions requiring videotaped interrogations, but the bill did not get a hearing in the Illinois Senate. It was not until control of the state Senate changed hands in the 2002 elections that a videotaping bill appeared headed for passage.

Credit for getting the videotaping bill into the final death-penalty package has been largely attributed to state Senator Barack Obama, a Democrat from Chicago. Obama is now running a strong race for the U.S. Senate, which, if successful, would make him the third African American senator since Reconstruction. Elected to the Illinois Legislature in 1996, he is considered an extremely effective legislator. Rather than accept law-enforcement opposition to the bill, he brought law-enforcement officials to the table for discussion, eventually persuading them to drop their opposition.

Illinois thus became the first state in the nation to pass legislation requiring the videotaping of interrogations. The legislation applies to what are called "custodial interrogations" -- those occurring at a police station -- in all homicide cases. The law works by preventing statements made by a suspect from being admitted in a court proceeding unless the statement was recorded electronically. Under limited circumstances, the prosecution may use unrecorded statements in court if they prove that the statement was voluntarily given and is reliable. The provisions represent a significant change from prior law, which permitted the prosecution to use a statement made by a defendant and put the burden on the defendant to prove that the statement was not given voluntarily. Under the new law, the burden shifts to the prosecution to prove that a statement made outside of an electronic recording process was made voluntarily and is reliable.

Provisions requiring electronic recording do not take effect until 2005 in order to allow time to develop procedures governing the recording. In the meantime, legislation was passed to establish several pilot programs throughout the state to record interrogations in murder cases. These programs will help police agencies develop procedures on how videotaping the interrogation process should occur and provide training for police officers in how to conduct videotaped interrogations.

In Illinois, these innovative proposals -- videotaping interrogations and sequential lineups -- apply not only to death-penalty cases but to others as well. While officials were initially reluctant to embrace the proposals, their widespread use will ultimately lead to better documentation of evidence and reduce wrongful convictions of all types. In departments where interrogations are videotaped and initial police resistance overcome, we have seen positive benefits, including a sharpening of police interview skills. Over the long term, police will likely come to appreciate these more rigorous investigative techniques.

Improvements in the death-penalty system have gathered increased support among legislators and the public. The reforms in Illinois passed by a nearly unanimous vote of the legislature. And public-opinion polling in February of 2003 suggests a softening of public attitudes on the death penalty in Illinois, with the percentage of state residents who support the death penalty at 55 percent, which is well below national polling figures.

Meanwhile, DNA testing continues to be carried out, leading to the release of innocent men and women -- more persuasive proof that our criminal-justice system makes mistakes, which is key in promoting death-penalty reform. The recommendations produced by the governor's commission in Illinois have become a standard by which other states have begun to evaluate their own death-penalty systems. In California, for instance, scholars have recently undertaken a systematic comparison of that state's death-penalty process with the Illinois recommendations and have illuminated many weaknesses.

In North Carolina, advocates of a death-penalty moratorium, modeled on Illinois Governor Ryan's, have gained ground with policy-makers. The North Carolina Senate passed moratorium provisions last year, and advocates are seeking approval in the North Carolina House. Public-opinion polling done by moratorium supporters indicates that 63 percent of those polled favor a moratorium on executions in the state pending a review of the death-penalty system. The North Carolina Academy of Trial Lawyers has released its own list of reforms that should be considered during such a moratorium, including a number of the same substantive reforms suggested in Illinois.

The discussion over reforming the death-penalty system, and the successful passage of so many reforms, has led to a broader evaluation of the criminal-justice system in Illinois and elsewhere. Greater scrutiny of death-penalty cases involving wrongful convictions is slowly leading observers to ask whether there are other miscarriages of justice we have yet to uncover in the rest of the criminal-justice system, where cases are given a far less rigorous review. Death-penalty reforms, then, may be a first step on the road to broader evaluation of the criminal-justice system itself.

© 2007 by The American Prospect, Inc.

Missouri groups lobby for death penalty moratorium

February 22, 2007

Missouri

Missouri groups lobby for death penalty moratorium

By Bob Watson, News Tribune

State Rep. Bill Deeken promised no miracles Tuesday when he talked about his
bill seeking a three-year moratorium on Missouri executions.

"I feel very confident that we will get a hearing this year, which is, I
think, the most important thing," said Deeken, R-Jefferson City. "Will we
get it passed this year? No.

"I've found out that you just don't come up with a bill and get it passed
right away."

Deeken's bill would place a moratorium on all executions in Missouri until
Jan. 1, 2011, and create a 10-member Commission on the Death Penalty to
study the use of the death penalty and recommend changes to state laws and
court rules regarding death penalty cases.

That commission would include lawmakers, defense and prosecution lawyers,
the Attorney General and family members of a murder victim and of a death
row inmate.

Deeken told more than 50 Missourians who came to Jefferson City to lobby for
the bill that the Missouri Catholic Conference asked him to sponsor it.

"The first thing I told them was, I am in favor of the death penalty,"
Deeken reported, "but we've got to do something about the people that are
being put to death that are not guilty - and we're finding this out more and
more, all the time."

Tom Sullivan, a former federal prosecutor with a 50-year history of legal
battles, co-chaired Illinois Gov. George Ryan's Capital Punishment Study
Commission.

Like Missouri, Sullivan said, Illinois' system had a lot of "bias in the
application of the death penalty" because each county's prosecutor decides
which cases to prosecute as death cases, with "no systematic review of what
they do - so you'll see a very great disparity among the cases that are
selected for death."

Ultimately, Sullivan said, Missouri should join the dozen other U.S. states
that don't have a death penalty.

"The deterrent effect of it is a joke," he said. "The death penalty is a
dumb law - stupid, costly and far more expensive than to put somebody in
jail, if they did it.

"And if you make a mistake, it's irreversible."

While many in the crowd agreed with Sullivan, they were encouraged to lobby
only for the moratorium right now.

Redditt Hudson, Racial Justice manager for the American Civil Liberties
Union of Eastern Missouri, told the crowd: "Our mission is worthy ... moral
(and) just."

Hudson struggles with the issue of the criminal justice system's just-ness
and fairness, when there have been 128 exonerations nationwide "where
innocent people have been shown to be innocent, yet (are) on death row,
scheduled to be executed."

"It doesn't mean I'm pro-criminal," he said. "It doesn't mean I'm
anti-law-enforcement.

"It means that as a human being, and for the sake of our collective
humanity, we have to do a better job of delivering the justice process to
the people who are in our system."

---

Source : News Tribune

Anti-Death-Penalty Governor Gets Nobel Nomination

From: The Campaign to Support the Nomination of George H. Ryan for the Nobel Peace Prize Former Illinois Governor George Ryan Nominated For The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize University of Illinois College of Law Professor Francis A. Boyle has nominated former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize because of his courageous and heroic opposition to the death penalty system in America. Despite tremendous opposition and criticism, Ryan single-handedly started what he calls a "rational discussion" on capital punishment in 2000 when he declared the Illinois death penalty moratorium. To this day, despite paying a heavy personal price for his courage, integrity, and principles, Ryan remains committed to the principle of seeking justice for the poor and oppressed. Ryan now takes his message globally, recently speaking before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Switzerland, continuing to initiate dialogue against the barbaric use of capital punishment around the world. Directly because of Ryan's imposed 2000 moratorium, a tidal wave of change has gained momentum in the United States. Death sentences are at a 30-year low, while the number of executions has dropped to a 10-year-low. And for the first time in two decades, more Americans now support life sentences over death as the proper punishment for capital crimes. New Jersey's governor signed into law a one-year moratorium on executions due to public demand, and Florida's Governor Bush suspended all executions until methods of execution can be examined in that state. California now has an imposed moratorium, and Ohio's new governor has stated moral questions concerning the use of capital punishment. The American Bar Association has also now declared that there should be a blanket moratorium on all executions in the United States because of widespread problems with the quality of defense given to poor and indigent capital defendants. As Governor Ryan exposed to the country in 2000, the burden of capital punishment consistently falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the forgotten underpriviledged members of society, and is often used as a racist institution against people of color. The United States’ attitude towards capital punishment is undeniably changing, and as a direct result of Ryan’s historical acts as former Governor of Illinois. Ryan exposed capital punishment to be a distorted means of justice rife with flaws and defects, and he began the dialogue that will one day abolish capital punishment in America. Professor Francis A. Boyle has stated that, "George Ryan is the beginning of the end of the death penalty in America," and it is for this reason that he richly deserves to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Joining him on the nomination papers were Chicago Attorneys Karen Conti, Greg Adamski and Jerome Boyle.

Illinois Gov. George Ryan halted all executions

The Almanac: Today is Wednesday, Jan. 31

January 31 in History


In 2000, Illinois Gov. George Ryan halted all executions in his state after several death row inmates were found to be innocent of the crimes for which they were about to be put to death.

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan Nominated For The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – January 30, 2007.

Former Illinois Governor George Ryan Nominated For The 2007 Nobel Peace Prize

University of Illinois College of Law Professor Francis A. Boyle has nominated former Illinois Governor George Ryan for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize because of his courageous and heroic opposition to the death penalty system in America.

Despite tremendous opposition and criticism, Ryan single-handedly started what he calls a "rational discussion" on capital punishment in 2000 when he declared the Illinois death penalty moratorium.

To this day, despite paying a heavy personal price for his courage, integrity, and principles, Ryan remains committed to the principle of seeking justice for the poor and oppressed. Ryan now takes his message globally, recently speaking before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Switzerland, continuing to initiate dialogue against the barbaric use of capital punishment around the world.

Directly because of Ryan's imposed 2000 moratorium, a tidal wave of change has gained momentum in the United States. Death sentences are at a 30-year low, while the number of executions has dropped to a 10-year-low. And for the first time in two decades, more Americans now support life sentences over death as the proper punishment for capital crimes.

New Jersey's governor signed into law a one-year moratorium on executions due to public demand, and Florida's Governor Bush suspended all executions until methods of execution can be examined in that state.

California now has an imposed moratorium, and Ohio's new governor has stated moral questions concerning the use of capital punishment.

The American Bar Association has also now declared that there should be a blanket moratorium on all executions in the United States because of widespread problems with the quality of defense given to poor and indigent capital defendants.

As Governor Ryan exposed to the country in 2000, the burden of capital punishment consistently falls upon the poor, the ignorant and the forgotten underpriviledged members of society, and is often used as a racist institution against people of color.

The United States’ attitude towards capital punishment is undeniably changing, and as a direct result of Ryan’s historical acts as former Governor of Illinois. Ryan exposed capital punishment to be a distorted means of justice rife with flaws and defects, and he began the dialogue that will one day abolish capital punishment in America.

Professor Francis A. Boyle has stated that, "George Ryan is the beginning of the end of the death penalty in America," and it is for this reason that he richly deserves to win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Joining him on the nomination papers were Chicago Attorneys Karen Conti, Greg Adamski and Jerome Boyle.

A Talk With Governor George Ryan

by BRUCE SHAPIRO
[from the January 8, 2001 issue]

If you sent to central casting for a Midwestern conservative, they'd send back Governor George Ryan of Illinois. With his white hair, plain business suit and heartland directness, Ryan is nobody's image of a crusading criminal-justice reformer. Not even his own. "I mean, I am a Republican pharmacist from Kankakee. All of a sudden I've got gays and lesbians by my side. African-Americans. Senators from Italy, groups from around the world. It's a little surprising."

A year ago in January, Ryan took a step unprecedented in the history of American capital punishment: He issued an open-ended moratorium on executions in Illinois. The immediate impetus: the exoneration of thirteen death-row inmates. Ryan's predecessor, Governor Jim Edgar, called those exonerations proof that "the system works." Ryan saw something different.

Ryan's moratorium received international attention, but his journey to that decision remained a largely private matter. He did not make the decision in a vacuum--legislators, lawyers and the media played a big role--but what led him to break so definitively with the bipartisan pro-execution consensus, and where his thinking has gone since, strikes at the core of the shifting politics of death.

Ryan, whose family owned several neighborhood drugstores in Kankakee for forty years, joined the Illinois legislature in the 1970s as a staunch law-and-order man. "I believed some crimes were so heinous that the only proper way of protecting society was execution. I saw a nation in the grip of increasing crime rates; and tough sentences, more jails, the death penalty--that was good government." In 1977, after the Supreme Court lifted its ban on execution, a bill to reinstate the death penalty came before the Statehouse in Springfield. When an anti-death-penalty legislator asked his colleagues to consider whether they personally would be willing to throw the switch, Ryan rose to his feet with "unequivocal words of support" for execution--words he now regrets. The truth, though, was that Ryan never thought about capital punishment much, before that vote or for more than twenty years afterward, except as an abstract idea of justice. "I supported the death penalty, I believed in the death penalty, I voted for the death penalty."

In September 1998, as Ryan was running for governor, an Illinois inmate named Anthony Porter, a man with an IQ of 51, was scheduled to die for a 1982 murder. Two days before Porter's execution date his lawyers won a temporary reprieve. Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess turned his investigative-reporting students loose on the case, and by February the evidence they obtained left the newly inaugurated Governor Ryan reeling: a videotaped confession by the real killer, freeing Porter after eighteen years. "I was caught completely off-guard. Maybe I shouldn't have been, but I was. That mentally retarded man came within two days of execution, and but for those students Anthony Porter would have been dead and buried. I felt jolted into re-examining everything I believed in." At first, a conflicted Ryan waffled on a full-fledged review of Illinois's capital apparatus, but ultimately he endorsed one concrete initiative: an $18 million capital-crimes-litigation fund to insure that defendants like Porter, as well as prosecutors, have access to investigative resources.

That experience also collided, within weeks, with a gubernatorial responsibility Ryan himself had helped enact: signing off on an execution. In the spring of 1999 the case of Andrew Kokoraleis landed on Ryan's desk. Kokoraleis had been found guilty of the rape, mutilation and murder of a 21-year-old woman. "This was a horrible crime, and I am the father of five daughters. But after the mistakes the system had made with Porter, I wasn't sure what to do. I agonized. I checked and double-checked and triple-checked the facts." In the end Ryan went through with it, and Kokoraleis was executed. But, says Ryan, "it was the most emotional experience I have ever been through in my life. It all came down to me--the one fellow who has to pull the switch. Quite frankly, that is too much to ask of one person."

Within three months, two more Illinois death-row inmates were exonerated: one by DNA evidence, the other when a jailhouse informant's testimony was discredited. The state judiciary began its own investigation, and the calls for a moratorium grew. Still, "I was resisting." But one day "the attorney general called seeking a new execution date for an inmate. In my heart at that moment, I couldn't go forward with it." Political cynics wondered if Ryan shifted his position to deflect attention from charges of corruption against his Secretary of State, but Ryan's description of his internal turmoil is compelling. "I knew I couldn't make myself live through what I'd experienced with Kokoraleis," he says. "I just couldn't do it again."

In the fall of 1999 the Chicago Tribune published an examination of every Illinois death-row case since 1977, revealing, among other things, that more than one-third of all 285 Illinois capital convictions over that period had been reversed because of "fundamental error." It was the final straw. Last January Ryan acted, unilaterally issuing his moratorium. He also assembled a commission, including such notable death-penalty opponents as Scott Turow and former Senator Paul Simon, to report on the roots of Illinois's false-conviction record. Ryan's moratorium--combined with relentless reporting by the Tribune--has had a seismic impact on Illinois politics. The commission's hearings have insured that death-row injustice is never far from the front page.

Ryan's position has changed over the past year. In May he told Northwestern students he doubted there would be another execution on his watch. Now, he is convinced that "moral certainty" in capital cases isn't possible. And he's broadened his focus: "My concern is not just with the death penalty as a singular issue; it's with the entire criminal justice system. If innocent people are sentenced to death--cases that get all kinds of scrutiny--what does that say about invisible, low-level cases, drug cases and so on?" Ryan has ordered the first wholesale reassessment of Illinois's criminal code in forty years; when he talks about sentencing disparities for drug offenses he sounds more like Jesse Jackson than Dennis Hastert.

Ryan argues, with great passion, that criminal-justice reformers need to extend their traditional concern for the poor to middle-class and suburban defendants--building a bridge to new constituencies. "I have seen people charged in drug cases where down comes the full force of the federal Treasury," he says. "Someone who is poor will get a free lawyer. But a truck driver, for instance, will have to mortgage his house and sell his rig to pay a lawyer. Then, when he is found not guilty, where can he go to get that house back, to get on with his life?"

These days Ryan often gets asked how he feels about fellow Republican George W. Bush's love affair with executions. He says he's had a "short conversation" with Bush about it and quickly adds that he has far more authority than Bush to halt individual executions.

Ryan's transformation is a journey still in progress. Most Americans will never have the occasion to feel revulsion for their own role in an execution. But that "jolt" he felt, and the moral anguish that followed, mirror a growing public unease. "A lot of people are like me, I think. The death penalty was a fact of life," he says. "But as people become more and more aware of the unfairness, they become less enthusiastic." Ryan, the heartland conservative, has tested his lifelong support for the death penalty against the evidence, and the institution has come up short: "I question the entire system and the people connected with it."

Governor Ryan's Commutation Announcement

Center on Wrongful Convictions
Governor Ryan's Commutation Announcement

Governor George H. Ryan's Address

Governor Ryan at Northwestern University School of Law, January 11, 2003 (Photo: Mary Hanlon)

Four years ago I was sworn in as the 39th Governor of Illinois. That was just four short years ago – that’s when I was a firm believer in the American System of Justice and the death penalty. I believed that the ultimate penalty for the taking of a life was administrated in a just and fair manner.

Today – 3 days before I end my term as Governor, I stand before you to explain my frustrations and deep concerns about both the administration and the penalty of death. It is fitting that we are gathered here today at Northwestern University with the students, teachers, lawyers and investigators who first shed light on the sorrowful condition of Illinois’ death penalty system. Professors Larry Marshall, Dave Protess have and their students along with investigators Paul Ciolino have gone above the call. They freed the falsely accused Ford Heights Four, they saved Anthony Porter’s life, they fought for Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez.

Before I go on, I need to take a moment to talk about Larry and Dave. Never have I met anyone with more passion or with a fiercer sense of Justice than these two men. They have a vision for what the Justice system can be, and they are an inspiration. It is also proper that we are together with dedicated people like Andrea Lyon who has labored on the front lines trying capital cases for many years and who is now devoting her passion to creating an innocence center at De Paul University. Andrea Lyon saved Madison Hobley’s life.

Together they spared the lives and secured the freedom of 17 men – men who were wrongfully convicted and rotting in the condemned units of our state prisons. Andrea, what you have achieved is of the highest calling. What you have achieved is of the highest calling – THANK YOU!

Yes, it is right that I am here with you, where, in a manner of speaking, my journey from staunch supporters of capital punishment to reformer all began. But I must tell you – since the beginning of our journey – my thoughts and feelings about the death penalty have changed many, many times. I realize that over the course of my reviews I had said that I would not do blanket commutation. I have also said it was an option that was there and I would consider all options.

During my time in public office I have always reserved my right to change my mind if I believed it to be in the best public interest, whether it be about taxes, abortions or the death penalty. But I must confess that the debate with myself has been the toughest concerning the death penalty. I suppose the reason the death penalty has been the toughest is because it is so final – the only public policy that determines who lives and who dies. In addition it is the only issue that attracts most of the legal minds across the country. I have received more advice on this issue than any other policy issue I have dealt with in my 35 years of public service. I have kept an open mind on both sides of the issues of commutation for life or death.

I have read, listened to and discussed the issue with the families of the victims as well as the families of the condemned. I know that any decision I make will not be accepted by one side or the other. I know that my decision will be just that - my decision – based on all the facts I could gather over the past 3 years. I may never be comfortable with my final decision, but I will know in my heart, that I did my very best to do the right thing.

Having said that I want to share a story with you: I grew up in Kankakee which even today is still a small Midwestern town, a place where people tend to know each other. Steve Small was a neighbor. He and his wife would look after our young children – when Lura Lynn and I were gone, which was not for the faint of heart since Lura Lynn and I had six children, 5 of them under the age of 3. He was a bright young man who helped run the family business. He and his wife had three children of their own. Lura Lynn was especially close to him and his family. We took comfort in knowing he was there for us and we for him.

One September midnight he received a call at his home. There had been a break-in at the nearby house he was renovating. But as he left his house, he was seized at gunpoint by kidnappers. His captors buried him alive in a shallow hole. He died before police could find him.
His killer led investigators to where Steve’s body was buried. The killer, Danny Edward was also from my hometown. He now sits on death row. I also know his family. I share this story with you so that you know I don’t come to this as a neophyte without having experienced a small bit of the bitter pill the survivors of murder must swallow.

My responsibilities and obligations are more than my neighbors and my family. I represent all the people of Illinois. The decision I make about our criminal justice system is felt not only here, but the world over.

The other day, I received a call from former South African President Nelson Mandela who reminded me that the United States sets the example for justice and fairness for the rest of the world. Today the United States is not in league with most of our major allies: Europe, South Africa, Canada, Mexico, most of South and Central America. These countries rejected the death penalty. We are partners in death with several third world countries. Even Russia has called a moratorium.

The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states. In none of these states has the homicide rate increased. In Illinois last year we had about 1000 murders, only 2 percent of that 1000 were sentenced to death. Where is the fairness and equality in that? The death penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly because of the absence of standards for the 102 Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sentence. Should geography be a factor in determining who gets the death sentence? I don’t think so, but in Illinois it makes a difference. You are 5 times more likely to get a death sentence for first-degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook County. Where is the justice and fairness in that – where is the proportionality?

The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu wrote to me this week stating that “to take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not justice. He says justice allows for mercy, clemency and compassion. These virtues are not weakness.”

"In fact the most glaring weakness is that no matter how efficient and fair the death penalty may seem in theory, in actual practice it is primarily inflicted upon the weak, the poor, the ignorant and against racial minorities. " That was a quote from former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote that in his book – Public Justice, Private Mercy he wrote that nearly 50 years ago – nothing has changed in nearly 50 years.

I never intended to be an activist on this issue. Soon after taking office, I watched in surprise and amazement as freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into the arms of Northwestern University Professor Dave Protess who poured his heart and soul into proving Porter’s innocence with his journalism students.

He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the execution chamber where the state would kill him.

It would all be so antiseptic that most of us would not have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was innocent of the double murder for which he had been condemned to die. After Mr. Porter’s case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong documenting the systemic failures of our capital punishment system. Half of the nearly 300 capital cases in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or resentencing. Nearly half!
33 of the death row inmates were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law.

Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 were African American defendants who had been convicted or condemned to die by all-white juries. More than two-thirds of the inmates on death row were African American. 46 inmates were convicted on the basis of testimony from jailhouse informants. I can recall looking at these cases and the information from the Mills/Armstrong series and asking my staff: How does that happen? How in God's name does that happen?
I have been asking this question for nearly 3 years and so far no one has answered.

Then over the next few months there were three more exonerated men, freed because their sentence hinged on a jailhouse informant or new DNA technology proved beyond a shadow of doubt their innocence.

We then had the dubious distinction of exonerating more men than we had executed. 13 men found innocent, 12 executed. As I reported yesterday, there is not a doubt in my mind that the number of innocent men freed from our Death Row stands at 17, with the pardons of Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange.

That is what is outrageous and unconscionable. 17 exonerated death row inmates is nothing short of a catastrophic failure. But the 13, now 17 men, is just the beginning of our sad arithmetic in prosecuting murder cases. During the time we have had capital punishment in Illinois, there were at least 33 other people wrongly convicted on murder charges and exonerated. Since we reinstated the death penalty there are also 93 people – 93 – where our criminal justice system imposed the most severe sanction and later rescinded the sentence or even released them from custody because they were innocent.

How many more cases of wrongful conviction have to occur before we can all agree that the system is broken?
Throughout this process, I have heard many different points of view expressed. I have had the opportunity to review all of the cases involving the inmates on death row. I have conducted private group meetings, one in Springfield and one in Chicago, with the surviving family members of homicide victims. Everyone in the room who wanted to speak had the opportunity to do so. Some wanted to express their grief, others wanted to express their anger. I took it all in.

My commission and my staff had been reviewing each and every case for three years. But, I redoubled my effort to review each case personally in order to respond to the concerns of prosecutors and victims’ families. This individual review also naturally resulted in a collective examination of our entire death penalty system.

I also had a meeting with a group of people who are less often heard from, and who are not as popular with the media. The family members of death row inmates have a special challenge to face. I spent an afternoon with those family members at a church here in Chicago. At that meeting, I heard a different kind of pain expressed. Many of these families live with the twin pain of knowing not only that, in some cases, their family members may have been responsible for inflicting a terrible trauma on another family, but also the pain of knowing that, society has called for another killing. These parents, siblings and children are not to blame for the crime committed, yet these innocent stand to have their loved ones killed by the state. As Mr. Mandela told me, they are also branded and scarred for life because of the awful crime committed by their family member.

Others were even more tormented by the fact that their loved one was another victim, that their loved one was truly innocent of the crime for which they had been sentenced to die.
It was at this meeting that I looked into the face of Claude Lee, the father of Eric Lee, who was convicted of killing Kankakee police officer Anthony Samfay a few years ago. It was a traumatic moment, once again, for my hometown. A brave officer, part of that thin blue line that protects each of us, was struck down by wanton violence. If you will kill a police officer, you have absolutely no respect for the laws of man or God.

I’ve known the Lee family for many years. There does not appear to be much question that Eric was guilty of killing the officer. However, I can say now after our review, there is also not much question that Eric is seriously ill, with a history of treatment for mental illness going back a number of years.

The crime he committed was a terrible one – killing a police officer. Society demands that the highest penalty be paid. But I had to ask myself – could I send another man’s son to death under the deeply flawed system of capital punishment we have in Illinois? A troubled young man, with a history of mental illness? Could I rely on the system of justice we have in Illinois not to make another horrible mistake? Could I rely on a fair sentencing?

In the United States the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.

To quote Governor Brown again – he said “society has both the right and the moral duty to protect itself against its enemies. This natural and prehistoric axiom has never successfully been refuted. If by ordered death, society is really protected and our homes and institutions guarded, then even the most extreme of all penalties can be justified.”

“Beyond its honor and incredibility, it has neither protected the innocent nor deterred the killers. Publicly sanctioned killing has cheapened human life and dignity without the redeeming grace which comes from justice delivered swiftly, evenly, humanely.”

At stake throughout the clemency process, was whether some, all or none of these inmates on death row would have their sentences commuted from death to life without the possibility parole. One of the things discussed with family members was life without parole was seen as a life filled with perks and benefits.

Some inmates on death row don't want a sentence of life without parole. Danny Edwards wrote me and told me not to do him any favors because he didn't want to face a prospect of a life in prison without parole. They will be confined in a cell that is about 6-feet-by-12 feet, usually double-bunked. Our prisons have no air conditioning, except at our supermax facility where inmates are kept in their cell 23 hours a day. In summer months, temperatures in these prisons exceed one hundred degrees. It is a stark and dreary existence. They can think about their crimes. Life without parole has even, at times, been described by prosecutors as a fate worse than death.

Yesterday, I mentioned a lawsuit in Livingston County where a judge ruled the state corrections department cannot force feed two corrections inmates who are on a hunger strike. The judge ruled that suicide by hunger strike was not an irrational action by the inmates, given what their future holds.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it is unconstitutional and cruel and unusual punishment to execute the mentally retarded. It is now the law of the land. How many people have we already executed who were mentally retarded and are now dead and buried? Although we now know that they have been killed by the state unconstitutionally and illegally. Is that fair? Is that right?

This court decision was last spring. The General Assembly failed to pass any measure defining what constitutes mental retardation. We are a rudderless ship because they failed to act.

This is even after the Illinois Supreme Court also told lawmakers that it is their job and it must be done. I started with this issue because I was and still am concerned about innocence. But once I studied, once I pondered what had become of our justice system, I came to care above all about fairness. Fairness is fundamental to the American system of justice and our way of life.
The facts I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole.

If the system was making so many errors in determining whether someone was guilty in the first place, how fairly and accurately was it determining which guilty defendants deserved to live and which deserved to die? What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

And in almost every one of the exonerated 17, we not only have breakdowns in the system with police, prosecutors and judges, we have terrible cases of shabby defense lawyers. There is just no way to sugar coat it. There are defense attorneys that did not consult with their clients, did not investigate the case and were completely unqualified to handle complex death penalty cases. They often didn’t put much effort into fighting a death sentence. If your life is on the line, your lawyer ought to be fighting extra hard for you. As I have said before, there is more than enough blame to go around.

I had more questions. In Illinois, I have learned, we have 102 decision makers. Each of them are politically elected, each beholden to the demands of their community and, in some cases, to the media or especially vocal victims’ families. I ask you, in cases that have the attention of the media and the public, are decisions to seek the death penalty more likely to occur? What standards are these prosecutors using?

Some people have assailed my power to commute sentences, a power that literally hundreds of legal scholars from across the country have defended. But prosecutors in Illinois have the ultimate commutation power, a power that is exercised every day. They decide who will be subject to the death penalty, who will get a plea deal or even who may get a complete pass on prosecution. By what objective standards do they make these decisions? We do not know, they are not public. There were more than 1000 murders last year in Illinois. There is no doubt that all murders are wrong and cruel. Yet, less than 2 percent of those murder defendants will receive the death penalty. That means more than 98% of victims’ families do not get, and will not receive, whatever satisfaction can be derived from the execution of the murderer. Moreover, if you look at the cases, as I have done – both individually and collectively -- a killing with the same circumstances might get 40 years in one county and death in another county. I have also seen co-defendants who are equally guilty where one gets sentenced to a term of years, while another ends up on death row.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart has said that the imposition of the death penalty on defendants in this country is as freakish and arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning.

In my case-by-case review, I found three cases that struck me as particularly unfair, troublesome and deserving of some form of commutation. In one of them, the murder victim’s family has publicly and privately urged me to act more aggressively than I will today. In the cases of Montell Johnson, Mario Flores and William Franklin, I am today commuting their sentences to a term of 40 years to fairly bring their sentences into line with their co-defendants and to reflect the other extraordinary circumstances of each of these cases.

For years the criminal justice system defended and upheld the imposition of the death penalty for the 17 exonerated inmates from Illinois Death row. Yet when the real killers are charged, prosecutors have often sought sentences of less than death. In the Ford Heights Four Case, Verneal Jimerson and Dennis Williams fought the death sentences imposed upon them for 18 years before they were exonerated. Later, Cook County prosecutors sought life in prison for two of the real killers and a sentence of 80 years for a third.

What made the murder for which the Ford Heights Four were sentenced to die less worthy of the death penalty twenty years later with a new set of defendants?

We have come very close to having our state Supreme Court rule out the death penalty statute - the one that I helped enact in 1977 – unconstitutional. Former State Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon wrote to me that it was only happenstance that our statute was not struck down by the state's high court. When he joined the bench in 1980, three other justices had already said Illinois' death penalty was unconstitutional. But they got cold feet when a case came along to revisit the question. One judge wrote that he wanted to wait and see if the Supreme Court of the United States would rule on the constitutionality of the new Illinois law. Another said precedent required him to follow the old state Supreme Court ruling with which he disagreed.

Even a pharmacist knows that doesn't make sense. We wouldn't have a death penalty today, and we all wouldn't be struggling with this issue, if those votes had been different. How arbitrary.

Several years after we enacted our death penalty statute, Girvies Davis was executed. Justice Simon writes that he was executed because of this unconstitutional aspect of the Illinois law – the wide latitude that each Illinois State's Attorney has to determine what cases qualify for the death penalty. One State's Attorney decided not to ask for the death sentence when Davis' first sentencing was sent back to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing. Instead, he was going to ask a life sentence. But in the interim, a new State's Attorney was elected and he decided he wanted the death penalty. He was successful in getting the death sentence and Davis was executed. How fair is that?

After the flaws in our death penalty system were exposed, the Supreme Court of Illinois began to reform its rules and improve the procedures for trying capital cases. It changed the rule to require that State's Attorney's give advance notice to defendants that they plan to seek the death penalty, before trial instead of after conviction. The Supreme Court also enacted new discovery rules designed to prevent trials by ambush and to allow for better investigation of cases from the beginning.

But shouldn't that mean if you were tried or sentenced before these important and essential reforms were enacted, to correct a clearly flawed system, that you ought to get a new trial or sentencing that will be more fair, just and accurate? This issue has divided our Supreme Court, some saying yes, a majority saying no. These justices have a lifetime of experience with the criminal justice system and it concerns me that these great minds so strenuously differ on an issue of such importance, especially where life or death hangs in the balance.

What are we to make of the studies that showed that more than 50% of Illinois jurors could not understand the confusing and obscure sentencing instructions that were being used? What effect did that problem have on the trustworthiness of death sentences? A review of the cases shows that often even the lawyers and judges are confused about the instructions - let alone the jurors sitting in judgment. Cases still come before the Supreme Court with arguments about whether the jury instructions were proper.

As I have said, I spent a good deal of time reviewing these death row cases. My staff, many of whom are lawyers, spent busy days and many sleepless nights answering my questions, providing me with information, giving me advice. It became clear to me that whatever decision I made, I would be criticized. It also became clear to me that it was impossible to make reliable choices about whether our capital punishment system had really done its job.

As I came closer to my decision, I knew that I was going to have to face the question of whether I believed so completely in the choice I wanted to make that I could face the prospect of even commuting the death sentence of Daniel Edwards – the man who had killed a close family friend of mine. Lura Lynn was angry and disappointed at my decision like many of the families of other victims will be.

I was struck by the anger of the families of murder victims. To a family they talked about closure. They pleaded with me to allow the state to kill an inmate in its name to provide the families with closure. But is that the purpose of capital punishment? Is it to soothe the families? And is that truly what the families experience.

I cannot imagine losing a family member to murder. Nor can I imagine spending every waking day for 20 years with a single-minded focus to execute the killer. The system of death in Illinois is so unsure that it is not unusual for cases to take 20 years before they are resolved. And thank God. If it had moved any faster, then Anthony Porter, the Ford Heights Four, Ronald Jones, Madison Hobley and the other innocent men we've exonerated might be dead and buried.

But it is cruel and unusual punishment for family members to go through this pain, this legal limbo for 20 years. Perhaps it would be less cruel if we sentenced the killers to life in a 6x12 cell, and used our resources to better serve victims.

My heart ached when I heard one grandmother who lost children in an arson fire. She said she could not afford proper grave markers for her grandchildren who died. Why can't the state help families provide a proper burial?

Another crime victim came to our family meetings. He believes an inmate sent to death row for another crime also shot and paralyzed him. The inmate he says gets free health care while the victim is struggling to pay his substantial medical bills and, as a result, he has forgone getting proper medical care to alleviate the physical pain he endures.

What kind of victim’s services are we providing? Are all of our resources geared toward providing this notion of closure by execution instead of tending to the physical and social service needs of victim families? And what kind of values are we instilling in these wounded families and in the young people? As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.

President Lincoln often talked of binding up wounds as he sought to preserve the Union. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

I have had to consider not only the horrible nature of the crimes that put men on death row in the first place, the terrible suffering of the surviving family members of the victims, the despair of the family members of the inmates, but I have also had to watch in frustration as members of the Illinois General Assembly failed to pass even one substantive death penalty reform. Not one. They couldn’t even agree on ONE. How much more evidence is needed before the General Assembly will take its responsibility in this area seriously?

The fact is that the failure of the General Assembly to act is merely a symptom of the larger problem. Many people express the desire to have capital punishment. Few, however, seem prepared to address the tough questions that arise when the system fails. It is easier and more comfortable for politicians to be tough on crime and support the death penalty. It wins votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a problem, most run for cover. Prosecutors across our state continue to deny that our death penalty system is broken – or they say if there is a problem, it is really a small one and we can fix it somehow. It is difficult to see how the system can be fixed when not a single one of the new reforms proposed by my Capital Punishment Commission has been adopted. Even the reforms the prosecutors agree with haven’t been adopted.

So when will the system be fixed? How much more risk can we afford? Will we actually have to execute an innocent person before the tragedy that is our capital punishment system in Illinois is really understood? This summer, a United States District court judge held the federal death penalty was unconstitutional and noted that with the number of recent exonerations based on DNA and new scientific technology we, without a doubt, executed innocent people before this technology emerged.

As I prepare to leave office, I had to ask myself whether I could really live with the prospect of knowing that I had the opportunity to act, but that I failed to do so because I might be criticized. Could I take the chance that our capital punishment system might be reformed, that wrongful convictions might not occur, that enterprising journalism students might free more men from death row? A system that’s so fragile that it depends on young journalism students is seriously flawed.

"There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending."

That’s what Abraham Lincoln said about the bloody war between the states. It was a war fought to end the sorriest chapter in American history--the institution of slavery. While we are not in a civil war now, we are facing what is shaping up to be one of the great civil rights struggles of our time. Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights has taken the position that the death penalty is being sought with increasing frequency against the poor and minorities.

Our own study showed that juries were more likely to sentence to death if the victim were white than if the victim were black--three-and-a-half times more likely to be exact. We are not alone. Just this month Maryland released a study of their death penalty system and racial disparities exist there too.

This week, Mamie Till Mobley died. Her son Emmett was lynched in Mississippi in the 1950s. She was a strong advocate for civil rights and reconciliation. In fact just three weeks ago, she was the keynote speaker at the Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation event in Chicago. This group opposes the death penalty even though their family members have been lost to senseless killing. Mamie's strength and grace not only ignited the civil rights movement--including inspiring Rosa Parks to refuse to go to the back of the bus--but inspired murder victims' families until her dying day.

Is our system fair to all? Is justice blind? These are important human rights issues, ones that need answers.

Another issue that came up in my individual, case-by-case review was the issue of international law. The Vienna Convention protects U.S. citizens abroad and foreign nationals in the United States. It provides that if you are arrested, you should be afforded the opportunity to contact your consulate. There are five men on death row who were denied that internationally recognized human right. Mexico's President Vicente Fox contacted me to express his deep concern for the Vienna Convention violations. . Based on my Commission’s findings and recommendations, this year I prepared and distributed to police agencies and prosecutors training materials to ensure compliance with the Vienna convention. If we do not uphold international law here, we cannot expect our citizens to be protected outside the United States.

My Commission recommended the Supreme Court conduct a proportionality review of our system in Illinois. While our appellate courts perform a case-by-case review of the appellate record, they have not done such a big picture study. Instead, they tinker with a case-by-case review as each appeal lands on their docket.

In 1994, near the end of his distinguished career on the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote an influential dissent in the body of law on capital punishment. 20 years earlier he was part of the court that issued the landmark Furman decision. The Court decided that the death penalty statutes in use throughout the country were fraught with severe flaws that rendered them unconstitutional. Quite frankly, they were the same problems we see here in Illinois. To many, it looked liked the Furman decision meant the end of the death penalty in the United States.

This was not the case. Many states responded to Furman by developing and enacting new and improved death penalty statutes. In 1976, four years after it had decided Furman, Justice Blackmun joined the majority of the United States Supreme Court in deciding to give the States a chance with these new and improved death penalty statutes. There was great optimism in the air.

This was the climate in 1977, when the Illinois legislature was faced with the momentous decision of whether to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois. I was a member of the General Assembly at that time and when I pushed the green button in favor of reinstating the death penalty in this great State, I did so with the belief that whatever problems had plagued the capital punishment system in the past were now being cured. I am sure that most of my colleagues who voted with me that day shared that view.

But 20 years later, after affirming hundreds of death penalty decisions, Justice Blackmun came to the realization, in the twilight of his distinguished career that the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice and mistake.” He expressed frustration with a 20-year struggle to develop procedural and substantive safeguards. In a now famous dissent he wrote in 1994, " From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

One of the few disappointments of my legislative and executive career is that the General Assembly failed to work with me to reform our deeply flawed system. I don't know why legislators could not heed the rising voices of reform. I don't know how many more systemic flaws we needed to uncover before they would be spurred to action.

Three times I proposed reforming the system with a package that would restrict the use of jailhouse snitches, create a statewide panel to determine death eligible cases, and reduce the number of crimes eligible for death. These reforms would not have created a perfect system, but they would have dramatically reduced the chance for error in the administration of the ultimate penalty.

The Governor has the constitutional role in our state of acting in the interest of justice and fairness. Our state constitution provides broad power to the Governor to issue reprieves, pardons and commutations. Our Supreme Court has reminded inmates petitioning them that while errors and fairness questions may actually exist and cannot recognized under judicial rules and procedural mandates, the last resort for relief is the Governor.

At times the executive clemency power has perhaps been a crutch for courts to avoid making the kind of major change that I believe our system needs.

Our systemic case-by-case review has found more cases of innocent men wrongfully sentenced to death row. Because our three year study has found only more questions about the fairness of the sentencing; because of the spectacular failure to reform the system; because we have seen justice delayed for countless death row inmates with potentially meritorious claims; because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.

I cannot say it as eloquently than Justice Blackmun.

The legislature couldn't reform it.

Lawmakers won't repeal it.

But I will not stand for it.

I must act.

Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error—error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. Because of all of these reasons today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates.

This is a blanket commutation. I realize it will draw ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this decision. They will say I am usurping the decisions of judges and juries and state legislators. But as I have said, the people of our state have vested in me the power to act in the interest of justice. Even if the exercise of my power becomes my burden I will bear it. Our constitution compels it. I sought this office, and even in my final days of holding it, I cannot shrink from the obligations to justice and fairness that it demands.

There have been many nights where my staff and I have been deprived of sleep in order to conduct our exhaustive review of the system. But I can tell you this: I will sleep well knowing I made the right decision.

As I said when I declared the moratorium, it is time for a rational discussion on the death penalty, here in Illinois and all across America. While our experience in Illinois has indeed sparked a debate, we have fallen short of a rational discussion. Yet if I did not take this action, I feared that there would be no comprehensive and thorough inquiry into the guilt of the individuals on death row or of the fairness of the sentences applied.

To say it plainly one more time- the Illinois capital punishment system is broken. It has taken innocent men to a hair’s breadth escape from their unjust execution. Legislatures past have refused to fix it. Our new legislature and our new Governor must act to rid our state of the shame of threatening the innocent with execution and the guilty with unfairness.

In the days ahead, I will pray that we can open our hearts and provide something for victims' families other than the hope of revenge. Lincoln once said: " I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." I can only hope, with God’s help, that will be so. God bless you. And God bless the people of Illinois.


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