Ill. Gov. Commutes 167 Death Sentences
Ryan's decision came three years after he temporarily halted
state executions to examine the system's fairness.
"I had to act," he said. "Our capital system is haunted by the
demon of error — error in determining guilt, and error in
determining who among the guilty deserves to die."
The move was quickly denounced by prosecutors, the incoming
governor and relatives of some murder victims; one relative said
Ryan "has killed them all over again." But it was met with
jubilation at Northwestern University, where a who's who of
anti-death penalty activists attended Ryan's speech.
"Gov. Ryan has taught us what leading truly looks like," said
Lawrence C. Marshall, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions
at Northwestern, the school whose journalism students have helped
exonerate some condemned inmates. "This is greatness, my friends."
The mass commutation was the sharpest blow to capital punishment
since the U.S. Supreme Court (news
- web
sites) declared it unconstitutional in 1972, forcing states to
redraw their laws to make them more equitable. About 600 sentences
were reduced to life with that decision, said Richard Dieter,
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
Most of the 167 Illinois inmates will now serve life without
parole. Ryan also reduced the sentences of three men; they could
eventually be released. In the few cases where death sentences were
under review, the maximum penalty will also be life without parole.
The announcement came two days before the Republican Ryan leaves
office as one of the nation's most influential anti-death penalty
advocates — a legacy he has embraced even as an ongoing federal
corruption investigation targeting his tenure as secretary of state
ruined his chances for re-election and made him a pariah within his
own party.
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.
Ryan said he sympathized with the families of the men, women and
children who had been murdered, but he felt he had to act.
"I am not prepared to take the risk that we may execute an
innocent person," he wrote in an overnight letter to the victims'
families warning them of his plans.
That reasoning didn't add up for prosecutors — or for relatives
of some victims.
"Every one of the victims, he has killed them all over again,"
said Cathy Drobney. Her daughter Bridget was killed in 1985 by
Robert Turner, whose sentence was commuted.
Said Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons: "The great,
great majority of these people that have petitioned for commutation
... did not even contest their guilt."
"He's disingenuous when he says that certainty is the issue,"
Lyons said.
With death row inmates he had recently pardoned sitting in the
audience as he spoke Saturday, Ryan framed the death penalty issue
as "one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."
Ryan had halted all executions in the state nearly three years
earlier after courts found that 13 Illinois death row inmates had
been wrongly convicted since capital punishment resumed in 1977 — a
period when 12 other inmates were executed.
He said studies conducted since that moratorium was issued had
only raised more questions about the how the death penalty was
imposed. He cited problems with trials, sentencing, the appeals
process and the state's "spectacular failure" to reform the system.
"Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and
capricious — and therefore immoral — I no longer shall tinker with
the machinery of death," he said.
Other governors have issued similar moratoriums and commutations,
but nothing on the scale of what Ryan has done. The most recent
blanket clemency came in 1986 when the governor of New Mexico
commuted the death sentences of the state's five death row inmates.
Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, who last year issued the
country's only other moratorium on state executions, has no plans to
pardon or commute the sentences of any death row inmate before
leaving office Wednesday, spokesman Chuck Porcari said.
Corrections Department spokesman Sergio Molina said Ryan had
signed commutation orders for 167 people — 156 on death row and
other in jails awaiting hearings or sentencing for other crimes.
Plans are in the works to nominate Ryan for the Nobel Peace
Prize, University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle said
earlier this week. On Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson (news
- web
sites) spoke out in favor of the nomination.
"I think it was morally right, it took political courage in this
climate. He deserves a Nobel Peace Prize," Jackson said.
But Vern Feuling, whose son William was shot and killed in 1985,
was outraged that the killer would be allowed to live.
"My son is in the ground for 17 years and justice is not done,"
Feuling said. "This is like a mockery."
Incoming Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, also criticized Ryan's
action, calling blanket clemency "a big mistake." Each case should
be reviewed individually, Blagojevich said. "You're talking about
people who've committed murder."
On Friday, Ryan had gone a step farther in four other death row
cases, issuing pardons for four men he said had been tortured by
police into making false confessions.
A few hours later, Aaron Patterson, 38, walked out of prison a
free man and ate his first steak dinner in 17 years, while Madison
Hobley and Leroy Orange spent time with their families.
Stanley Howard, 40, the fourth man pardoned Friday, remained in
prison. He had also been convicted of a separate crime for which he
was still serving time. All four had been convicted in murders.
"It's a dream come true, finally. Thank God that this day has
finally come," Hobley, 42, said Friday as he left the Pontiac
Correctional Center.
Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine said the future of the
four men should have been decided by the courts. His office is
trying to determine if the pardons could be challenged, but Devine
said the clemency powers for an Illinois governor are among the
broadest in the country.
"Instead, they were ripped away from (the courts) by a man who is
a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade," he said. "Yes,
the system is broken, and the governor broke it today."
Ollie Dodds, whose 34-year-old daughter, Johnnie Dodds, died in
an apartment fire that Hobley was convicted of setting, said she was
saddened by Ryan's decision.
"I don't know how he could do it," she said, adding that she
still believes Hobley is responsible.
"He doesn't deserve to be out there."
