Posted on 01/11/2003 11:09:14 PM PST by spetznaz
CHICAGO - Calling the death penalty process "arbitrary and capricious, and therefore immoral," Gov. George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates Saturday, clearing Illinois' death row in a move unprecedented in scale in U.S. history.
Ryan's action, just two days before he leaves office, drew immediate angry reaction from prosecutors, the incoming governor and relatives of some of the victims.
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.
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."
"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," Ryan said. "What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?
"Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates."
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 only other thing that would match what he's done is in 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) overturned the death penalty and 600 death sentences were reduced to life with that decision," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at rd.yahoo.com ...
For one how do you tell the families of the victims that the killer of their child or sibling is not going to be 'sent where he belongs.' It must be really tough for the victims' families for this to be dropped on them, especially when you consider what they had to go through during sentencing and all that .....and then after they think the whole process is over this is dropped on their laps! Difficult to absorb.
On the other hand the article states that in Illinois (where this is taking place) that capital punishment was re=started in 1977. Since that time appeals and new evidence has proven that 13 death row inmates were innocent (yet the courts had managed to somehow say they were guilty and convict them for execution). And in the same period 12 people were put to death (in essence there were 12 put to death, and 13 got their deaths entences overturned. Meaning that if we assume the 12 who were executed were truly guilty then that means that the state Capital system made more mistakes ...13. ....compared to accurate decisions ...12)
Hence the governor does have a point, although i am sure many may not support it. It depends on how you look at it ....risk putting an innocent to death by mistake or letting a guilty oaf not to face the symbolic hangman.
Personally i would have taken a middleground approach and reviewed each case in depth. This would have been quite expensive (and maybe that is why it was not considered) but it would at the very least weed out those who are guilty from those who should not even be in prison in the first place.
By the way there was a documentary that showed how certain states has DNA evidence from the last one and a half decades but declines to use it because it may overturn capital decisions! In essence those states are letting potentially innocent people face death because they do not want to do a relatively simple DNA matching test and see what the results say (to drive the point home the News Channel paid for several tests to be done using the results in storage, and half of them proved the wrong person was in death row)! That is not a good percentage.
Hence this is a tricky area that will make many on both sides of the capital punishment debate get into a heady conflagration. The best conclusion would be a middle-ground approach ....but that will not happen because it would cost the state much needed revenue!
By the way expect the same decision (maybe not the same ...but similar) to be adopted by other states.
However if you look beyond the sneakiness of the timing he does have some points (the governor not Clinton ...lol). And that si what i tried to explain in post no.1. The guy has some points when you consider the fact the state of Illinois seems to have made more mistakes since 1977 that accurate judgement.
As i said personally i would have taken a middle ground and reviewed each case on an individual basis instead of just slapping a blanket amnesty ...however i guess the powers that be decided not to do that!
Anyways the timing is 'interesting' to say the least, but the fact still remains there were flaws that were quite serious. I put it better in my first post.
Thanks to Ryan, there will be thousands more murder victims in Illinois -- a few will die at the hands of the people he let off death row. But vast numbers will simply be from the coming increase in murders in Illinois as potential killers realize that they don't have the death penalty to fear.
Also, he might be hoping that he has scored points with some potential black jurors. He might even get a little of that OJ-style jury now and avoid conviction.
It is impossible for anyone to die because of those guys let off deathrow because they were not freed ....there sentences just became life. Hence unless they pull some Houdini escape act they should still be in jail for a long time.
The cases depicted had evidence thatw as collected from the scene ....for example semen that the perp left inside the murdered rape victim. DNA does not change ...and if the test result does not match the person in prison then some serious questions have to be asked. Questions like 'do we have the right person?'
In the cases which were used as an example (the ones the media group paid for ...and led to half of the test subjects getting released from prison) already had several problems. For example the witnesses had said they were not 'completely sure' if it was the person ....but the prosecution had still gone ahead and managed to lock up the folks in deathrow. There were such 'hmmmm factors' and that is why the documentary was chosing such cases specifically. And getting slightly over 50% over-turned convictions showed there was something seriously flawed with the convictions passed. (Actually in one capital crimes case a person came forth and confessed to be the actual murder when he got a guilt trip on seeing an innocent guy being given the death penalty ...the confessor's story tied to the crime perfectly, he fet the profile of the person being sought after, and fibers from him were found in the crime scene .....however the prosecution just threw out his input and the other guy was convicted)
Let me say by the way i am not against capital punishment ....i just want it directed to those who did the crime.
As for the OJ case you brought up the only reason that fella is walking free is because he had the money to employ a body of lawyers who know every loophole that was ever present in jurisprudence! If OJ was not wealthy then he would be rotting in prison waiting for his execution date (people think it is because the dude was famous .....that is not completely true even though it is part of the reason .....the real reason is the fella had enough financial clout to hire lawyers who could convince a lion that it was an octo-vegeterian. The prosecution messed up, the cops were not as meticulous as they could have been ....and that added by OJ's lawyers preparing adequately and using several stunts such as the 'glove', the 'tampered evidence' and other stratagems got what mgiht very well be a guilty guy out on the streets).
As for DNA the darn stuff could be from the time of the dinosaurs ...as long as sufficient robonucleic strands exist then the thing is the closest thing to foolproof humans can come to. Even twins do not have the exact same sequence of DNA ...it is even more accurate than fingerprints (and by FAR more accurate to blood-typing).
What happened in OJ's case was that lawyers who cost an arm and a leg (for good reason i may add) managed to twist what the cops and prosecutors had to say and get OJ off the hook when orthodox logic states the guy should be locked up right now (again i add if OJ did not have the cash to pay for his lawyers he would not have beaten that murder rap ....actually the key to not going to jail is money ...unless ofcourse you bite off more than you can chew. In most cases with enough money you can have pounds of cocaine, bags of ecstasy, slain victims, ruined companies etc etc etc ....but with a good lawyer cadre you will walk free!)
However in the documentary all that was needed was 15 dollars to test the DNA evidence ....and people walked free without the need for powerball lawyers or crafty attorneys!
That's what everyone is screaming but the most likely result is that it won't make any difference. What WOULD make a difference is for Illinois to make open carry legal for the average citizen.
if that law would've been inplace at the time, our turncoat then would've only had 83 murderers to glom onto w/ his vane and self-serving ulterior motive since maybe the other 84 murderers would've been shot-dead or diverted from their evil deed...
Put me in that category although if there was conclusive "proof" that any of this scum were actually innocent I would be the first to change my mind.
To my knowledge there has never been conclusive proof of an "innocent" person being put to death by any of our state systems...regardless of how flawed they are claimed to be.
By the same token there are those that are let out or commuted because of "flaws" in the evidence or criminal procedure but again, that's far from proof of innocence.
Scheck LIED sucessfully......
You may not know this but 3 were paroled..that means they were freed.
That's what they do..
That's ALL they do..
And they won't stop..
EVER!!
Something very wrong has happened to our criminal justice system over time. It has gone from "hang 'em high" (which was also wrong) to intentional lying, obfuscation and deception to get the louse off. Witness the Van Damm case where the lawyers KNEW their louse was guilty of the crime and still put up this deceptive fantasy tale about another possible scenario.
It was disgusting. They should be prosecuted and at the very least, disbarred.
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