As Gov. George Ryan's end-of-term announcement on the fate of Illinois' condemned prisoners grows closer, I'm receiving more and more letters like this one from Laurence Nelligan of Naperville.

"I find it fascinating that Gov. Ryan has been able to hoodwink relatively intelligent people with his `concern' about the death penalty," he writes. "In reality it's been a cleverly staged distraction from (extended recitation of Ryan's alleged misdeeds)." He adds that I'm among those "being manipulated by Gov. Ryan for the purpose of deflecting the realities of his corrupt administration."

Well, maybe. But as one who lacks the vanity to believe that he can see into others' hearts--a vanity now endemic among Ryan's critics for whom his insincerity on the issue of capital punishment is an article of faith--I can only look to the record.

Set the Wayback Machine for January 2000. Ryan has been in office one year and is in trouble. There have been 28 indictments and 17 convictions related to the licenses-for-bribes corruption that took place under him when he was secretary of state. His former inspector general, Dean Bauer, is telling reporters that he expects to be indicted soon. And Ryan is on the losing end of a power struggle with hard-shell conservative state Senate President James "Pate" Philip.

A Market Shares Corp. poll taken for the Tribune and WGN-TV shows that only 43 percent of Republicans--members of Ryan's own party!--say they have a favorable opinion of him. His favorable rating in the suburbs, where his 25-point victory margin meant the difference in his narrow win in the 1998 election, is at a dispiriting 39 percent.

Hmm. How to shore up support among his political base? How to win a few friends among prosecutors, who seem to be closing in on him with grim precision?

Any political strategist who suggests that Ryan could reverse his fortunes by crusading against the death penalty will be fired for incompetence.

Though a 1999 poll taken right after yet another Death Row inmate was exonerated showed narrow support in Illinois for a moratorium on executions, 63 percent of respondents said they still supported capital punishment. A nationwide Gallup Organization poll in 1999 said support for the death penalty was most concentrated among middle-income conservative Republicans, once Ryan's strongest backers, 84 percent of whom said they believed in executing murderers.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, leaders whose allegiance might well prove advantageous to the governor in any number of areas, are former county prosecutors who oversaw some of the state's most alarming miscarriages of capital justice.

Even supposing that Ryan doesn't care one way or the other about the death penalty, it looks like the absolutely wrong issue on which to launch a comeback, persuade the law to go easy on him and get reporters to stop writing so much about his sleazy past.

And, indeed, after he announces a moratorium on executions on Jan. 31, 2000, the number of stories in major area newspapers linking Ryan to scandal, bribery and corruption is significantly greater in each of the next four months. By late July the feds have scored nine new indictments and 11 new convictions.

Meanwhile, his popularity continues to plunge. The percentage of those who view him favorably has fallen by July to 27 from 38 early in the year, and just 19 percent of voters tell our pollsters that Ryan deserves a second term. Support for his moratorium has sunk to 40 percent from 66 percent five months ago (it has since rebounded to the high 60s).

That Ryan stayed the course anyway suggests three possibilities. One, he is insane. Two, he has a political and legal death wish. Or three, he really is profoundly, morally troubled at the idea of giving the power to kill to an arbitrary, error-prone system presided over by officials who can't admit when they're wrong and are stubbornly resistant to reform.

Never mind what he says or what his supporters and detractors say. Never mind the promise of international plaudits, the slough of troubles he will wade into when he leaves office Monday or the cohort of chortling cronies he will leave behind in their soft new state jobs.

To see George Ryan's heart on the death penalty, look at the numbers.