By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

When outgoing Gov. George Ryan announced that he would empty Death Row Jan. 11, less than 48 hours before leaving office, he earned the cheers of anti-death penalty advocates and the families of the 167 men and women who had been condemned by the state of Illinois.

At the same time, he earned the bitter jeers of prosecutors, some murder victims’ families and many state politicians for commuting the sentences to life in prison without parole.

A Catholic Conference of Illinois statement expressed sympathy with the pain murder victims’ families feel, but acknowledged “the granting of clemency by Gov. Ryan is consistent with Catholic principles in opposition to the death penalty. The death of the murderer cannot bring back the one who has been killed, nor does revenge help to heal the hole in the heart of the grieving loved ones. ... We pray that Gov. Ryan’s clemency will lead to healing.”

Ryan, a Republican, said he took the extraordinary step because he had become convinced that the system of capital punishment in Illinois was arbitrary, unfair, racist and fraught with error. He made the blanket commutations a day after pardoning four other Death Row inmates who maintained they were tortured by police in confessing.

“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,” Ryan said in a speech at Northwestern University Law School.

Deacon George Brooks, advocacy director of Kolbe House prison ministry for the archdiocese, called the decision the only “fair, just and moral” one Ryan could make, but said it was “bittersweet.”

“There’s so much pain in the situation involving everybody,” Brooks said. “It’s good that the four innocents were pardoned. It’s good that the 167 won’t be killed. But there’s still so much pain for the victims’ families, for the ones who were on Death Row who still have innocence claims, for their families.”

New Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, called the commutations a “big mistake” before his Jan. 13 inauguration. However, he said he plans to keep the moratorium on executions in effect for any new death sentences handed down for the time being.

In the months leading up to the decision, Ryan had received communications from international religious leaders and officials, including Vatican officials and Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, urging him to take such a step.

The Prisoner Review Board also held nine days of clemency hearings last October to allow murder victims’ families to have their say, and Ryan met with several families.

Ryan made his decision after halting executions in Illinois in 2000, after the state released its 13th exonerated Death Row inmate since executions resumed in the United States in 1977. By then, Illinois had executed 12 people.

The governor then convened a blue-ribbon panel to study the way capital punishment was administered in Illinois. After about 2 years of study, the majority of the panel’s members said they believed the system could never be foolproof and should be abolished. Nevertheless, they released 85 recommendations aimed at reducing the chance of error.

Over the last year, reforms based on the recommendations have been introduced in Springfield three times, without a vote.

Announcing his decsion, Ryan noted that some of the Death Row inmates had not requested clemency.

“Some inmates on Death Row don’t want a sentence of life without parole,” Ryan said. “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.”

Because modern societies can keep their members safe by locking criminals up, there is no reason for execution, said Bob Gilligan, acting director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois.

The church’s stand against imposing the death penalty “goes back to the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death,” Gilligan said. “In a modern socity, we have other ways of protecting people.”

Still, Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine blasted the decision and vowing to try to overturn it—although legal scholars say the chances of that are slim.

Many critics of the decision have questioned whether Ryan made the blanket commutations to deflect attention from ongoing investigatations into alleged corruption at the Illinois Secretary of State’s office under Ryan’s leadership and speculation that Ryan could face a federal indictment now that he has left office.

Brooks countered that he believes the commutations were the result of Ryan’s “moral journey,” and added that executing a murderer doesn’t help the murder victims’ families—something prosecutors must realize since they don’t seek the death penalty in 98 percent of murder cases.

“We see the hatred and bitterness and anger that have continued with the victims’ families,” Brooks said, talking about the outcry caused by the commutations. “This is not at all relieved by seeking the death penalty. It’s extended by seeking the death penalty. It does not help heal the hole in their hearts.”

 

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