ur capital system is
haunted by the demon of error," Illinois Governor George Ryan said
on January 11, clearing his state's death row as his final act of
office. Other executive orders, like Harry Truman's integration of
the military, have been more sweeping, and a few, like President
Ford's pre-emptive pardon of Richard Nixon, even more controversial.
But never has a governor or President been so visibly moved to
action by systemic failure in the criminal justice system, and never
before has capital punishment been thrust so squarely into the
spotlight by a single politician.
What Ryan has done, first, is to save 167 lives and probably many
more. His commutation of those death sentences to a maximum of life
in prison makes any future execution in Illinois--formerly site of
one of the nation's largest death rows--at best a distant prospect.
Ryan's successor, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, is trying to play both
sides of the issue, claiming to favor keeping the moratorium on
executions while reforming the state's capital justice system. But
if Illinois juries start handing out new death sentences tomorrow,
even a single execution is years away--the average time span from
sentence to execution in Illinois has been thirteen years. By then,
it's conceivable that Illinois or the nation will have abandoned
capital punishment entirely.
The significance of this moment rests not just with the
commutations but in Ryan's journey. This conservative Republican
pharmacist-turned-pol has recounted how the exoneration of mentally
retarded death-row inmate Anthony Porter--falsely accused of a
double murder and saved only by the investigative efforts of college
students--began the nagging doubt in his mind. Less obvious,
perhaps, is the role prosecutors and pro-capital punishment
legislators played in his decision. After the Porter case, Ryan
named a blue-ribbon commission, which proposed reforms in Illinois
capital laws, and Ryan went to his legislature three times asking
for a narrowing of the death penalty. But the legislators were
unwilling to modify a system under which seventeen death-row
defendants were falsely convicted and more than thirty were
represented by disbarred or suspended lawyers.
Just how much of this is tied up in Ryan's own legal and
political troubles is a matter for conjecture. Though Ryan is
surrounded by a corrupt administration and faces possible indictment
himself in a license-peddling scandal, anyone who speaks with him
finds little evidence that his stand on the death penalty is
anything but sincere. In October, a wrenching series of individual
commutation hearings brought forth the details of death-row
defendants' crimes and new facts about their convictions, and
Ryan--long a supporter of victims' rights--publicly wavered. It's
hard to think of a more conscientious use of a governor's power to
pardon and commute as a court of last resort, when the customary
checks and balances have utterly failed.
The lengthy efforts of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at
Northwestern University, the Chicago Tribune and others to
examine the minute particulars of the Illinois capital system have
paid off, not just in the commutation of local sentences but in
national awareness that the scandal of capital justice is scarcely
limited to Illinois. In Congress, Senator Patrick Leahy's Innocence
Protection Act and national moratoriums sponsored by Senator Russell
Feingold and Representative Jesse Jackson Jr. languish. Ryan's
action makes it easier to change that. Attention now turns to
Maryland, where incoming Governor Robert Ehrlich promises to lift
his predecessor's moratorium, and to new national campaigns against
the execution of juveniles, led by Amnesty International and the
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.
Ryan's action also resonates because in a personal and profound
way he exemplifies the discomfort growing numbers of Americans have
with capital punishment. The many Illinois prosecutors who predict a
widespread backlash miss the crucial point that when it comes to the
death penalty, the views of Americans are in the midst of a profound
change. Judges newly challenge capital punishment's
constitutionality, dozens of cities have passed moratorium
resolutions and even the new pro-capital punishment governor of
Virginia believes his state is disturbingly resistant to
death-row-innocence cases.
No backlash will end these doubts, and that is why Ryan's
commutations change death-penalty politics forever.