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'The system has failed'
Ryan condemns injustice, pardons 6; paves the way for
sweeping clemency
By Steve Mills and Christi Parsons
Tribune staff reporters
Published January 11, 2003, 9:20 AM CST
Saying he wanted to correct a "manifest injustice," Gov.
George Ryan on Friday pardoned four Death Row inmates and laid the
groundwork for an unprecedented act of clemency by a U.S.
governor.
Although aides said Ryan continued to struggle late
Friday with whether to commute the sentences of all remaining 156
Death Row inmates, sources said he ordered that letters be delivered
overnight notifying victims' families that Ryan would in fact grant
a blanket commutation.
In
the two-page letter, Ryan told family members how difficult it had
been to reach the decision to grant blanket commutations, but he
said it was the only way to prevent an innocent person from being
executed--his greatest concern. Ryan closed the letter with the
words, "May God bless you."
Ryan, who leaves office Monday,
loaded his Friday announcement of the pardons with indications he
would commute the death sentences to life in prison without parole.
He pointed out in a speech that the state Constitution provides a
governor broad powers. He noted as well that life in prison is a
stark existence and that inmates "have no freedom."
The
majority of Ryan's speech, though, focused on the pardons--based on
innocence--to four men who together have spent nearly 60 years on
Death Row and whose cases are linked by allegations of torture by
Chicago police. He said the cases "cry out to be
fixed."
"Today, I shall be a friend to Madison Hobley,
Stanley Howard, Aaron Patterson and Leroy Orange," Ryan said, naming
the four prisoners, in his address at DePaul University law school
in Chicago. "Today, I am pardoning them of crimes for which they
were wrongfully prosecuted and sentenced to die."
"The system
has failed for all four men," he said. "And it has failed the people
of this state."
Ryan also pardoned Gary Dotson, who was
convicted of a 1979 rape but later exonerated by DNA testing, and
Miguel Castillo, who was released two years ago after spending more
than 11 years in prison for murder when jail records showed he was
in custody when the crime was committed.
The words brought
tears of joy to the families of the inmates and strong condemnation
from prosecutors across the state and the victims'
families.
Sitting in the DePaul audience and waiting for Ryan
to arrive, Hobley's sister Robin read a prepared copy of the
governor's speech and began to cry as she discovered her brother
would be set free.
"I've read so many horrible [court]
transcripts over 16 years. I don't believe what I'm reading," she
said. "Oh, Gov. Ryan, thank you. ... It seems just like Christmas
and New Year's and a birthday all wrapped up into
one."
Patterson's mother, Joanne, searched a copy of Ryan's
speech for words about her son and began to shake as she found them.
She said the speech confirmed what she had hoped and prayed for over
the last week as Patterson's name was floated as a likely candidate
for a pardon.
"Now that I read this," she said, "everything
is really just fine."
Cook County State's Atty. Richard
Devine called the pardons "outrageous and
unconscionable."
"All of these cases would have been best
left for consideration by the courts which have the experience, the
training and the wisdom to decide innocence or guilt," Devine said
at a Friday night news conference. "Instead, they were ripped away
from the justice system by a man who is a pharmacist by training and
a politician by trade."
Devine said Ryan "jumped into bed
with the defense bar," accusing him of not seeking information from
prosecutors to get their side of the cases. He refused to say
whether he believed the four had been tortured by
police.
Devine also said he would have to review the
governor's action before deciding whether to consider the four cases
closed or to reopen the investigations.
"By his actions today
the governor has breached faith with the memory of the dead victims,
their families and the people he was elected to serve," he
said.
Ollie Dodds, whose daughter was one of seven victims of
a 1987 arson fire that sent Hobley to Death Row, said the pardons
left her tired and heartbroken.
"It's put me in a painful
spirit," said Dodds, who still believes that Hobley set the fire
that killed Johnnie Mae Dodds. "I just couldn't believe what he was
saying. If he had lost a daughter or a son in that fire, I bet he
wouldn't have done it."
Gayla Ridgell Redmond, whose father
was murdered in 1984 in the case that sent Howard to Death Row, said
she was struggling with her emotions.
"I guess I have mixed
feelings about it," she said. "I'm not an advocate of the death
penalty, so I wasn't looking for him to be executed," she said. "But
for him to be totally pardoned of the crime--I can't say I'm too
happy."
Redmond, who lives on Chicago's Far South Side, said
she was comforted that Howard has to serve another 18 years for
other convictions--cases that Ryan said also are
tainted.
Still, Redmond said nothing would "bring my dad
back."
Paul Dengel, Howard's attorney on his death penalty
case, said he would begin to investigate that case as well in the
hopes of obtaining Howard's release.
Gov.-elect Rod
Blagojevich, who said he backs the death penalty in "clear-cut and
extreme cases," urged Ryan not to grant the blanket clemency
Saturday.
"The goal here is to serve justice, and I oppose
blanket clemencies and blanket pardons," Blagojevich said. "I hope
he reviewed all those cases carefully and he reached his conclusions
based on each individual fact pattern in each case. If he did that
and he made a judgment that justice will be served by that, then I
have no quarrel with that."
But Ryan said it was the
system--from prosecutors and police to judges and defense
attorneys--that had failed.
He said Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon
Burge and detectives working for him in the former Burnside Area
headquarters on the South Side routinely tortured suspects as they
sought to obtain murder confessions.
He said justice is too
often subverted by prosecutors hiding behind procedural rules to
keep judges or juries from hearing all the facts in a
case.
And he said defense lawyers often made colossal
failures. In the case of Orange, Ryan said his attorney never raised
his claim that police electric-shocked him.
Most of the
cases, he said, relied heavily on dubious confessions.
"In
some way I can see how rogue cops, 20 years ago, could run wild. I
can see how, in a different time, they perhaps were able to
manipulate the system. What I can't understand is why the courts
can't find a way to act in the interest of justice," Ryan said as
the crowd of students and family members broke into
applause.
Ryan even cited little-known evidence in some
cases, such as a sworn affidavit obtained by Northwestern University
journalism students from a man who said another man confessed to
being involved in the murders for which Patterson was found guilty
and condemned.
Police Supt. Terry Hillard, while not directly
laying blame for the pardons on Burge, nevertheless made clear that
Burge's actions had "disgraced the integrity and honor" of the
Chicago Police Department and led to his firing. He noted the
department was cooperating with a special prosecutor's investigation
into the torture allegations.
Flint Taylor, who represented
Patterson and has worked for years to prove the allegations against
Burge, said the pardons supported the charges of misconduct against
Burge as well as against county prosecutors. He said the pardons
should fuel the inquiry by the special prosecutor, not slow
it.
"It would be shocking if people say this takes care of
it," Taylor said. "There's still a tremendous amount of unfinished
business. There are people who haven't been released. ... And what
about the people who put them there."
Burge, reached at his
home in Florida, declined to comment.
Ryan said his office's
three years of study of the death penalty and its review of the
cases of the state's 160 Death Row inmates had convinced him that
Hobley, Patterson, Howard and Orange were innocent.
He was
equally convinced, he said, the legislature had failed in its duty
to pass reforms recommended by the blue-ribbon commission of
prosecutors, defense attorneys, former judges and other experts he
appointed to study the death penalty when declaring a moratorium on
executions in January 2000.
"What does it take?" he said.
"Now we can say the number of wrongfully convicted men is not 13 but
17. And I would ask, will that be enough?"
Some lawmakers
said the governor's actions, particularly if he grants a blanket
commutation, could hurt chances for reform.
"If the governor
decides to commute all of them, I think reform is dead in its
tracks," said state Sen. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), the architect of
one conservative reform package. "If he does that, the dynamic
changes."
DuPage County State's Atty. Joe Birkett also
predicted the chances for reform would die because the public would
react angrily to any mass commutation.
"A lot of people will
be outraged, especially after they look at the facts of these
cases," Birkett said Friday. "Most of these cases are not close. In
the overwhelming majority, there was no question of
guilt."
Ryan singled out Birkett's office for particular
criticism. He noted angrily that although former Death Row prisoners
Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez have been exonerated of the
rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, DuPage prosecutors
have "to this day, to this minute" failed to charge Brian Dugan in
connection with the case.
Dugan has offered his confession in
exchange for being spared the death penalty, and his prosecutors say
his DNA connects him Jeanine's murder.
"The governor is
obviously not a lawyer, but a pharmacist, not aware of the rules of
law," said Birkett. "When I am satisfied that there is enough
evidence [against the suspect], I will seek an
indictment."
Hours after the speech, Hobley and then
Patterson walked out of Pontiac Correctional Center.
Hobley
was met by his wife, Kim, a law school graduate who married him
while he was on Death Row and had only shared a kiss each time he
arrived in the prison visiting room and a kiss when
leaving.
She said she knew Hobley had not set the fire that
killed seven people, including his wife and infant son.
"When
you meet, you know right away this man is innocent," she said. "I
believed that God didn't save him from that fire just to kill
him."
The release of Orange, convicted in the 1985 stabbing
deaths of four people and a fire set to cover up the murders, was
delayed two hours in Cook County Jail. He walked into the arms of
family shortly after 5 p.m.
Orange's lawyers had faxed the
governor's pardon early in the afternoon to the jail, but officials
in the sheriff's office said prosecutors had demanded the lawyers
produce an original letter with an original signature. Orange was
being held in the jail to attend a court hearing on his
case.
Patterson, convicted of a 1986 double murder in the
South Chicago neighborhood, left prison to cheers from the other men
on Death Row and requests that he help bring their cases to the
governor's attention.
But before he was free, he was told he
would be on supervised release for three years and might even have
to spend part of it on home-monitoring.
"They dropped the
bombshell on me right before I came out," he said.
Taylor,
Patterson's attorney, said he believed Patterson had served his time
while on Death Row and should be free and clear of any crimes
committed in the past.
Riding in a car with Appolon Beaudouin
Jr., an investigator with the State Appellate Defender's Office who
has worked on the Patterson case for several years, Patterson said
he was stunned that hours earlier he had been on Death
Row.
"For the first time," said Patterson, "I think I'm
speechless."
Tribune staff reporters Art Barnum, Mickey
Ciokajlo, Jeff Coen, Shia Kapos, Maurice Possley, David Mendell and
David Heinzmann contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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