Posted on 09/27/2002 1:08:30 PM PDT by gubamyster
September 27, 2002 2:55 p.m.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens sailed into Chicago early in the week to preside over the distribution of awards given in his name. Mr. Stevens is a hero in the anti-capital-punishment crusade because it was he who wrote the decision banning the execution of the mentally retarded, thus relieving some 20 states that had not yet banned it the tedium of passing their own laws on the subject.
Justice Stevens is a nibbler on the subject of capital-punishment reform, and in his speech he applauded the work of Gov. George Ryan. Gov. Ryan, hereafter GEORGE — for reasons that will be apparent — had set up a commission to revise c/p codes and Stevens was there to applaud the commission's proposals. They called for reducing crimes warranting the death penalty from 20 to five, for videotaping police interrogations of all capital-crime suspects, and for barring convictions on the testimony of a single eyewitness or jailhouse informant. There were 82 other recommendations, "each of which is supported by thoughtful consultation." Justice Stevens put his cards on the table when he said: "Its goal speaks for itself."
That same day, Illinois attorney general JIM Ryan filed a lawsuit against GEORGE. What JIM is saying, essentially, is that GEORGE is giving play to his penchant against capital punishment by coming out in favor of practically any reason to reverse or mitigate capital convictions. GEORGE has until next January as governor, and he will be succeeded by JIM if the Democratic challenger is defeated.
Now JIM is especially vexed because Illinois voters are always confusing him with GEORGE, even though they are unrelated and don't really like each other. GEORGE's future is clouded on one front, bright on another. His administration has been, in the beguiling words of his attorney general JIM, "the worst administration in the history of Illinois." There are charges out there that the government has traded everything from driver's licenses to contracts in return for contributions. It isn't obvious what convicted murderers can contribute to the welfare of GEORGE, but that does not mean they can't contribute anything. Because the bright spot out there is that there is talk of a Nobel Prize for GEORGE in recognition of his struggle against capital punishment.
Up until now, the governor has found some reason or other to commute a sentence, but he is going to have to use blanket executive clemency if he is going to spare all of the 158 remaining Death Row people, and it looks very much as though he is prepared, at the margin, to do exactly that. There is of course opposition, both by JIM, who spends his time prosecuting people GEORGE is going to spare, but opposition also by the many people of Illinois who favor capital punishment. And of course, there are the families of the afflicted, for instance, U'Rica Winder, described by Jodi Wilgoren of the New York Times as having "survived being stabbed 48 times, at age 6, when her mother, sister and two others were killed in their apartment in a Chicago housing project in 1986." She says, "I know who killed my family. I was there."
Now the anti-c/p people are coming in on many fronts. We have the Ruth Bader Ginsburg decision that says only juries, not just judges, can specify the capital penalty. We have the judge in Vermont who the other day declared that federal c/p is unconstitutional because etc., etc. This is to say nothing of the multifarious human-rights people, who include one Pope, whose pressure is relentless.
The engrossing feature in the political situation is the arrogation of preeminent authority by governors. Hugh Carey, when governor of New York, announced simply that he would commute any sentence before sending people to the chair, never mind a) that the voters favored c/p; b) the state legislators wrote the laws; c) the Supreme Court confirmed that right to execute in 1976. Never mind. His successor Mario Cuomo took pretty much the same line, raising the question whether it is contumacious for a governor to take the formal right to commute and transforming that into public policy, with the effect of repealing a public law.
Well, the frustration of JIM is understandable. Not only are his hard-won convictions slowly going out the window, his political career is in shambles because so many people think JIM is GEORGE. He has begged newspapers to use first names in every reference to a Ryan in Illinois, and the result of all of this is that a Democrat may take the statehouse. No one else is running for anything in Illinois with the same name as Mr. Blagojevich, who apparently will benefit from the whole mess as next governor of Illinois.
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