SOUTHERN ILLINOIS -- John Woodhouse of Mount Vernon got a letter from outgoing Gov. George Ryan Saturday.

Ryan wanted Woodhouse and other relatives of Illinois murder victims to know that the governor had decided to grant blanket commutation of sentences to all death row inmates in the state.

Ryan commuted the sentences of all 167 inmates on Illinois' death row Saturday, saying the state's death penalty system is arbitrary, capricious and immoral.

Ryan's letter was how Woodhouse got the news that Paul Taylor would not be executed for the 1992 murder and rape of Woodhouse's wife, Kathy Ann, but would instead spend the rest of his life in prison. No current death row inmate in Illinois will face execution, following Saturday's governmental pardon, which commuted all but three death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Those three will have their sentences reduced to less than life.

"This decision is supposed to be about human rights. Well, when I think of human rights, I think of my wife, Kathy," said Woodhouse. "My wife's rights to her life were violated by Paul Taylor, so I don't see why his rights should be placed ahead of hers."

Ryan's action is the broadest attack on the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1972, forcing states to redraw their laws to make them more equitable.

"I had to act. Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error," Ryan said, "error in determining guilt, and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die."

His speech to a jubilant audience at Northwestern University's law school capped a remarkable transformation for a law-and-order Republican who took office four years ago as a staunch supporter of capital punishment.

ADVERTISEMENT

He leaves office on Monday as one of the nation's most influential anti-death penalty advocates, having begun what he called his "journey" three years ago when he declared a moratorium on executions. It is a legacy he has embraced even as an ongoing federal corruption investigation ruined his chances for re-election and made him a pariah within his own party.

Reaction to Ryan's decision was swift and loud.

Woodhouse said that the focus of the death penalty debate in Illinois has been too one-sided, because it has stressed the offenders rather than the victims and the harm done to the victim's families.

"The problem is the system, not the sentences," said Woodhouse. "If it's true -- and it seems to be true -- that the system is jailing and executing innocent people, well, fix the system. They had years and years to fix the flaws in the system. But don't destroy the sentences. Don't let murderers off the hook. This makes a mockery of my wife's life."

Randy Odle of Mount Vernon, who lost five family members to a murder in 1985 committed by his cousin, said he would have been able to accept Ryan's decision if the governor had made his decisions on a case-by-case basis.

"There was never any question about Thomas Odle's guilt. He bragged about killing our family. He admitted it when the police arrived and he bragged about it in jail," said Randy Odle. "This decision mocks our judicial system, and tells the jurors they did not do their jobs."

Odle said he thinks the outgoing governor was motivated by political concerns. "Ryan is not my governor. I think he's doing this to take attention away from the scandals associated with his office," said Odle. " He wants to be remembered for this, and not for those scandals."

Incoming Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, called it "a big mistake" and said each death penalty case should be considered individually. Blagojevich said he doesn't intend to lift the moratorium on executions, but he also doesn't plan to intervene if courts impose death sentences in new cases.

Former Illinois senator Paul Simon, another influential Democrat, supported Ryan's announcement. Simon was unequivocal in his support of Ryan's decision, characterizing it as a very courageous move.

"Governor Ryan has moved this nation in the direction of the other world democracies. The U.S. has been alone in the world in its use of the death penalty," said Simon. "What the families of the victims want is revenge, and that's understandable. But the role of government can't be about revenge. The role of government is to protect society -- and there is no evidence at all that the death penalty protects society."

Simon said that 19 U.S. states do not have the death penalty, and the murder rate is not higher in those states.

"Do people feel safer in Texas, which executes more people than any other state, than they do in Iowa, which has no death penalty?" asked Simon. "It's obvious that there is no basis to think the death penalty is a deterrent." Simon said he has much admiration for Ryan.

"This was such a courageous thing for him to do," Simon said.

The Illinois State's Attorneys Association, a group of county prosecutors, will investigate ways to challenge Ryan's actions, said the group's president, Champaign County State's Attorney John Piland. But several prosecutors acknowledged there may be little they can do about the governor's broad clemency power, short of an amendment to the state constitution.

In the most anticipated speech of his tenure, Ryan declared that the system is riddled with so many problems it is "immoral." He called the fight against the death penalty "one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."

Among those cheering in the audience were three black men who had been released from death row a day earlier after Ryan pardoned them outright, saying they had been tortured by Chicago police into making false confessions.

Nearly all of the 167 whose sentences were commuted on Saturday will serve life in prison without parole. Ryan reduced the sentences of three men to a number of years, meaning that they could eventually be released. In a few cases in which death sentences were under review, the maximum penalty will now be life without parole.

Ryan said that after three years of studying the death penalty in Illinois, he could not live with himself if he did nothing. He cited problems with trials, sentencing, the appeals process and the state's "spectacular failure" to reform a system that has condemned innocent men to die.

"The legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it," Ryan said.

He sympathized with the families of murder victims, but said that their pain was only made worse because the capital punishment process leaves them in "legal limbo" as the appeals process plays out.

"I may never be comfortable with the decision I make," Ryan said. Even his wife, he said, "was angry and disappointed at my decision."

Prosecutors scoffed at Ryan's broadbrush attack on the criminal justice system.

"The great, great majority of these people that have petitioned for commutation . . . did not even contest their guilt," said Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons. "He's disingenuous when he says that certainty is the issue."

While Ryan's pardons Friday were for people he said were innocent, those inmates whose sentences he commuted Saturday included some who were convicted the most brutal crimes in the state's history.

They include a man and woman who murdered a pregnant woman, her 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and cut the baby from her womb. The baby survived.

Others were two brothers who beat a sleeping couple to death with baseball bats and a father who tortured his mute, severely retarded and handicapped stepdaughter for five years until she died.

Until Saturday, Illinois had the eighth largest death row in the nation. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, Illinois has executed 12 men, one whose death warrant was signed by Ryan. But in that same time, 13 others have been released from death row because new evidence exonerated them or flaws were found in the way their cases were handled.

Other governors have issued commutations, but nothing on the scale of what Ryan has done. The most recent precedent for blanket clemency came in 1986 when the governor of New Mexico commuted the death sentences of the state's five death row inmates.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

claire.obrien@thesouthern.com

618-529-5454 x15076

 
 

E-mail this story to a friend