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Clemency for all
Ryan commutes 164 death sentences to life in prison
without parole. `There is no honorable way to kill,' he
says.
By Maurice Possley and Steve Mills
Tribune staff reporters
Published January 12, 2003
Declaring the state's capital punishment
system "haunted by the demon of error" and citing the state
legislature's failure to reform it, Gov. George Ryan on Saturday
commuted the sentences of every inmate on Illinois' Death
Row.
With two days left as governor, Ryan issued a blanket
commutation that converted every death sentence to life in prison
without parole--164 inmates, including four women.
"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, borrowing the words of the late U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Harry Blackmun. "I won't stand for it. ... I had to
act."
Ryan placed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000
after 13 Death Row inmates were exonerated and following the Tribune
series "The Failure of the Death Penalty in Illinois," which exposed
serious flaws. Ryan said his three-year examination of the state's
death penalty system had only raised new alarms over errors in
determining guilt and errors in determining "who among the guilty
deserves to die."
He called the number of exonerated
inmates--a total that grew to 17 when he pardoned four men from
Death Row on Friday on the basis of actual innocence--"an absolute
embarrassment" and "a catastrophic failure."
"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," Ryan
told a cheering audience at Northwestern University's School of Law
that included six exonerated former Death Row inmates.
"The
Illinois capital punishment system is broken. It has taken innocent
men to a hair's breadth escape from their unjust
execution."
Ryan, whose power to commute and pardon is immune
from challenge, responded to critics--whose ranks include Gov.-elect
Rod Blagojevich, who called it a mistake, and Cook County State's
Atty. Richard Devine.
"Prosecutors in Illinois have the
ultimate commutation power, a power that is exercised every day," he
said. "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."
The death
penalty was handed out differently, Ryan said, depending on where
people lived in Illinois, who their prosecutor was, who their
defense lawyer was, how poor they were and what race they
were.
"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, someday," Ryan
said.
He said he found it difficult to believe the system
could be repaired when "not a single one" of the reforms urged by
his Capital Punishment Commission has been adopted by the
legislature.
"These reforms would not have created a perfect
system, but they would have dramatically reduced the chance for
error," he said. "I don't know how many more systemic flaws we need
to uncover before [the legislature] would be spurred to
action."
Ryan acknowledged his decision to commute the
sentences of all Death Row prisoners "will draw ridicule, scorn and
anger from many ... Even if the exercise of my power becomes my
burden, I will bear it. ... I sought this office, and even in my
final days of holding it, I can't shrink from the obligations to
justice and fairness that it demands. ... I'm going to sleep well
tonight knowing I made the right decision."
In all, Ryan
commuted 164 death sentences to life without parole. On Friday he
pardoned four Death Row inmates, resulting in the release of three.
Another three Death Row inmates had their sentences shortened to
40-year terms.
After his speech, during interviews with
reporters, Ryan said he hoped his action would spark increased
examination of the death penalty in other states.
"If it's
this bad in Illinois, it's probably just as bad across the country,"
he said.
Ryan commuted the terms of three Death Row
inmates--Mario Flores, Montell Johnson and William Franklin--to
40-year prison terms.
Ryan's blanket commutation caps a
remarkable ideological journey for a beleaguered governor. The
Republican entered the governor's office a staunch supporter of
capital punishment. As a state legislator in 1977, he voted in favor
of reinstating the death penalty. When he departs the office Monday,
still hounded by an unrelated corruption scandal, Ryan will leave
behind a vacant Death Row.
Though other governors have taken
sweeping clemency actions before him, experts said Ryan's decision
compares in scale only with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972
overturning of the death penalty, which reduced hundreds of death
sentences to life.
What effect his decision may have on the
debate over capital punishment nationally remains to be seen, but
Ryan sealed his place as a hero of the anti-death penalty movement,
drawing support from leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Rev. Jesse
Jackson.
But the extraordinary move also prompted outrage and
anguish from prosecutors and some murder victims' families, who
received letters from Ryan on Saturday morning telling them what he
was about to do.
"I am not prepared to take the risk that we
may execute an innocent person," Ryan wrote in the letters sent by
overnight mail.
Devine called the decision "stunningly
disrespectful to the hundreds of families who lost their loved ones
to these Death Row murderers." With his choice, Devine said, Ryan
had "once again ripped open the emotional scabs of these grieving
families."
Peoria County State's Atty. Kevin Lyons said Ryan
is "in hate with" justice.
"It was so offensive for him to
compare himself to Lincoln and say, `I am a friend to these men on
Death Row,'" Lyons said. "My reply is, yes, your excellency, you
certainly are. Now go home before you make any more friends who are
murdering the good people of Illinois."
Some family members
and friends of murder victims said they believed Ryan was merely
trying to shift attention away from the corruption scandal that has
plagued his administration and led to criminal charges against top
aides.
"I just think it's political tactics," said Helen
Sophie Rajca of Bolingbrook, whose two brothers were shot and
stabbed to death in 1979.
In his speech, Ryan acknowledged
the anger of the victims' families. Ryan had listened to their
gripping stories and pleas in recent months and had at one point
told family members he was leaning away from a blanket commutation.
During the more than hourlong speech, he struggled to retain his
composure when he told the story of family friend Stephen Small from
Kankakee, whose killer also got his sentence commuted.
Death
Row may be empty, but there are more than 60 capital cases in the
pipeline in Illinois where prosecutors have formally declared their
intention to seek the death penalty, the vast majority in the
Chicago area.
In dozens of other cases, defendants are
technically eligible for the death penalty, but prosecutors have yet
to signal their intentions.
In Cook County, there are an
estimated 50 pending capital cases. There are three capital cases in
Kane and one in Will County. In DuPage, prosecutors are considering
the death penalty in six cases.
In Coles County, a death
penalty trial will begin next month for Anthony Mertz. He is accused
of strangling Shannon McNamara, an Eastern Illinois University
student.
Incoming Att. Gen. Lisa Madigan said she still
believed capital punishment was appropriate for heinous crimes, and
said she hoped the governor's decision would not delay or derail the
reform process.
She said she planned to review the lawsuit
her predecessor, Jim Ryan, has filed in an effort to scuttle
commutations received by those who did not sign clemency petitions,
or whose death sentences have been tossed out by the
courts.
"I will meet with the lawyers in the attorney
general's office and reach out to State's Atty. Devine very soon to
decide our next step in that case," she said through a
spokeswoman.
At the Mexican Consulate, relatives of Flores,
Juan Caballero and Gabriel Solache--the three Mexican nationals on
Death Row--gathered to express their appreciation.
"This has
been a very difficult week for us. We heard [Mario] was going to be
pardoned, then we heard the opposite. But it is great just to know
he is not going to be executed. We are really grateful," said Ana
Flores, Mario's sister.
Carlos Sada, Mexico's general consul
in Chicago, hailed the announcement as a victory for Mexico, which
has 54 nationals in Death Row in the U.S., making Mexico the country
with the largest number of foreign nationals among condemned
prisoners in this country.
Asked if he considered that he had
saved many lives, Ryan told a reporter, "I never thought about that.
... My goal was to improve a broken system in
Illinois."
After the commission made recommendations that
were not implemented, "the next logical step is if you can't fix it
... repair or repeal. You can't repeal it. Politically, it's
impossible to do. So we had to do the next best thing we could, and
that's what we did today. We commuted the sentences, there's a clean
slate for the new governor to come in. ... And he's got a new
General Assembly coming in."
Former Illinois Chief Justice
Moses Harrison II, who dissented in every death penalty case during
the end of his term on the court, called Ryan's action a courageous
step. "He indicated a long time ago that he was aware the system was
broken," said Harrison. "Once he did that, why, then there was only
one thing he could do."
Tribune staff reporters Jeff Coen,
Monica Davey, John Keilman and Christi Parsons contributed to this
report.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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