[GailA]

fyi

[07055]

The only positive is that almost all of them will not have the possibility of parole. When I first saw the headline, I thought he was letting all of them out immediately.

[greydog]

Ryan was an A-hole from day one.

I think maybe he is trying to put forth the idea that criminals are being unfairly prosecuted/sentenced because HIS day in court is coming (swiftly, I hope).

[Xthe17th]

RE: death 'penalty' and capital 'punishment'

Both words express an intent to reform; 'punishment' just being the juvenile version of the more adult 'penalty'. But if someone is DEAD, they can't be reformed!

Let's just call it like it is - EXECUTION. And if we're gonna execute people, let's do it right - BY PUBLIC HANGING! Bring back the gallows and none of this nonsense of letting criminals wait around on 'death row' to maybe eventually be euthenized like a family pet. That way, the gravity of the situation will be made clear.

IMHO, too many judges are too quick to give the death sentance 'cause they know the convict will just wait around in limbo on death row. This way, if they know their sentance would result in an immediate HANGING, they'll be more careful in their judgements.

[William Terrell]

. . .but Devine said the clemency powers for an Illinois governor are among the broadest in the country.

Does this mean that the new governor can reverse that descison?

[Notforprophet]

George Ryan had already singlehandedly destroyed the GOP in Illinois for years to come. The scandals surrounding him and his cronies cost the Republicans the Governor's mansion, and every other statewide office except Treasurer. Now he does this, in a vain and desperate attempt at some sort of legacy. What an A-hole.

[steve50]

I wonder why the innocent people being convicted didn't raise any outrage? Too many prosecutors only concern is clearing the case to further their political ambitions. If we are to retain the death penalty we need some criminal penalities to insure prosecutors want justice, not votes.

[lavaroise]

"I am not prepared to take the risk that we may execute an innocent person,"

Of course, he is prepared to violate statutes himself in the name of his crytal ball predictive social engineering. Who is we? We would be guilty? That is rich! Societal and cultural decay in America is going full bore, especialy amongst the powerful who seem more afraid than people.

Of course Ryan can keep speaking, just as the murderers will while victims cannot, thus arming defacto murderers now in class cahoots with Ryan. If there was something worse than the murders, well it is now Ryan's blanket stereotyped pardon.

Meanwhile Ryan fulfills those murders because he allows the continuation of the status that those murders sought in the first place: violating statutes, killing people, while the murderers can get away with it and keep having an illegal contract with society, confining people in jails, destroying millions invested in their defense and in the prosecutions and what not.

Ryan is the biggest disgrace since Clinton, and this man's new religion of evil statute destruction and social engineering heralding is going to be the type of heart crimes that he will have to face when he meets our Maker.

For in the end it is not so much the action itself that is despicable, but the basis of his "legal" action on social engineering precepts that he demands be embraced in the color of law. I am sorry, Ryan did something illegal. A pardon is not done on those unreasonable terms that have also political and Jihadesque aim.

[SJackson]

Illinois firearms & Second Ammendment ping list. If you'd like to be added or removed, please FRMail me..

[facedown]

Just the closing chapter of a shameful saga.

[merak]

The usual standard of justice in America, i.e. guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, is clearly not good enough for capital punishment. You can't unhang somebody; the criteria for capital punishment has to be guilty beyond any doubt whatsoever. In particular, I get the impression that too many black people have been convicted of crimes by eye-witness testimony from people who couldn't tell two black people apart if one was male and the other female or one alive and the other dead.

[Noumenon]

Another candidate for some 'unintended consequences'.

[RightOnline]

One must wonder how many victims' family members will take the law into their own hands since the system has collapsed to such an extent...............??

[Jhoffa_]

"What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

What effect did it have on their convictions in the first place? If you have to put a question mark after it, then it means you don't know.

Further, what effect did race and poverty have on their convictions in the first place? I mean, if you don't think they are guilty then they shouldn't be in jail. Why not just turn them all loose?

By commuting the death sentance but keeping them locked up for life, Governor Ryan is in effect saying: "Well, they'er a little guilty.. Guilty enough to forefit their freedom for the rest of their lives, because of their crimes. But not guilty enough to face the death penalty for their crimes."

I think this is an un-acceptable alternative. If the state has a reasonable doubt as to their guilt, they shouldn't be holding them. If not, their sentance should be executed according to the law.

All but three of the 156 inmates will now serve life in prison without possibility of parole.

I would rather the state kill me than to live in a box, especially if I was only 'a little' guilty.

[BillyBoy]

MURDERS THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVERTED BY EXECUTION:
A sample of the murderers freed to kill again after receiving a "Life" sentence

•Charles Fitzgerald
--Killed a deputy sheriff and was given a 100-year prison sentence as a result.
--Reeased after serving just 11 years.
--Then murdered a California policeman.
--Given "life" for that killing.
--Paroled again in 1971.

• "Gypsy" Bob Harper
--Convicted of murder, given a so-called "life" sentence.
--Escaped from a Michigan prison and killed two persons.
--Recaptured, then killed the prison warden and his deputy.

• Ed Jover
--Convicted committed two murders, sentenced to execution
--Execution overturned and he received clemency for each
--Murdered twice more after clemeny.

• Joseph Taborsky
--Sentenced to death in Connecticut for 1951 murder
--Freed when the courts overturned the sentence on technitalities.
--Later was found guilty for another murder, for which he was electrocuted in May 1960. Before his execution, he confessed to the 1951 murder.

• Allen Pruitt
--Convicted of knife slaying of a newsstand operator and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--Later charged with fatally stabbing a prison doctor and an assistant prison superintendent, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
--In 1968, his conviction was overturned on a technicality by the Virginia Supreme Court. He was re-tried, again found guilty, but given a 20-year sentence instead of life. Since he had already served 18 years, and had some time off for "good behavior," he was released.
--December 31, 1971: Arrested and charged in the murder of two men in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

• Richard Biegenwald
--Murdered a store owner during a robbery in New Jersey.
--Convicted, given a "life" sentence rather than death.
--After serving 17 years, he was paroled. He violated his parole, was returned to prison, but was again paroled in 1980.
--He then shot and killed an 18-year-old Asbury Park, New Jersey girl. He also killed three other 17-year-old New Jersey girls and a 34-year-old man.

•Oral Kolame
--Found gulity of brutally murdering his wife. Pleaded with the judge and jury to impose the death sentence, but was given "life" instead.
--Later killed a fellow inmate and was executed for the second killing in 1966.

• Arthur James Julius
--Convicted of murder and sentenced to "life" in prison.
--In 1978, he was given a brief leave from prison, during which he raped and murdered a cousin.
--He was sentenced to death for that crime and was executed on November 17, 1989.

• Jimmy Lee Gray
--Conviction for killing a 16-year-old high school girl and given a "life" sentence
--Later freed on parole thanks to "good" behavior.
--Kidnapped, sodomized, and suffocated a three-year-old Mississippi girl. He was executed for that second killing on September 2, 1983.

• Timothy Charles Palmes
--Found gulity of a manslaughter conviction
--Was on probation fo this murder when he and two accomplices robbed and brutally murdered a Florida furniture store owner.
--Palmes was executed for the killing on November 8, 1984. An accomplice, Ronald Straight, was executed on May 20, 1986.

•Wayne Robert Felde
--Convicted of manslaughter in Maryland
--Later given a work release program
--Violated parole, while being taken to jail in handcuffs, pulled a gun hidden in his pants and killed a policeman.

• Donald Dillbeck
--Convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison for murdering a Florida sheriff.
-- In 1983, he tried to escape. In January of this year he was transferred to a minimum-security facility. On June 22nd, he walked away from a ten-inmate crew catering a school banquet.
--Two days later, he was arrested and charged with stabbing a woman to death at a Tallahassee shopping mall.

• Jack Henry Abbott
--Convicted killer, serving "life" sentence in New York for murder of fellow inmate
--In 1981, author Norman Mailer and many other New York literati embraced Abbott and succeeded in having him released early from a Utah prison.
--July 18, 1981 (six-weeks after his release), Abbott stabbed actor Richard Adan to death in New York. He was convicted of manslaughter and received a "15-year-to-life sentence." Mrs. Adan sued Abbott for her husband's wrongful death and her pain and suffering.
--On June 15, 1990, a jury awarded her nearly $7.6 million.

• Lowell Jensen and Gene Dinkins
--Both serving "life" terms in Marion, IL for previously murdering inmates
--On October 22, 1983 at the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, two prison guards were murdered in two separate instances by the inmates
--On November 9, 1983 the Associate U.S. Attorney General told a Senate subcommittee that it is impossible to punish or even deter such prison murders because, without a death sentence, a violent life-termer has free rein "to continue to murder as opportunity and his perverse motives dictate. "

• Benny Lee Chaffin
--Convicted of murder in Texas, but not executed
--Later kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 9-year-old Springfield, Oregon girl.
-- The same jury that convicted him for killing the young girl refused to sentence him to death because two of the 12 jurors said they "could not determine" whether or not he would be a future threat to societ.

• Thomas Eugene Creech
---Convicted of three murders and had claimed a role in more than 40 killings in 13 states as a paid killer for a motorcycle gang, but never sentenced to death
-- Later killed a fellow prison inmate in 1981 and was sentenced to death.
--1986: his execution was stayed by a federal judge and has yet to be carried out.

•Dalton Prejean
-- When he was 14, he was convicted of killing a taxi driver.
-- When he was 17, he gunned down a state trooper in Lafayette, Louisiana.
-- Despite protests from the American Civil Liberties Union and other abolitionist groups, Prejean was finally executed for the second murder on May 18, 1990.

•Ted Bundy
-- Serial killer murdered many women starting in 1974. There is no speculation as to how many women he killed. Anywhere between 30 and 40 is what he claimed.
-- Captured August 16, 1974. Found guilty of aggrevated kidnapping and attempted murder, and was to go for psychiatric exams.
--June 7, 1977: Bundy escaped. Headed to Florida State University campus.
--January 14, 1978: Bundy murdered two women and gravely injured two more at the Chi Omega sorority house. Days later, Bundy's last victim was 12 year old Kimberly Leach. He left her body to decompose in an abandoned hog shed.
-- Bundy was recaptured on February 15, the jury convicted Bundy on two counts of first-degree murder in the Chi Omega sorority slayings. He got another death sentence for the murder of 12 year old Kimberly Leach. Bundy was taken to death row. Bundy's confessions finally came out, and left everyone in disgust. He talked about clubbing his victims to death, sexually violating them and strangling them.
-- Bundy was electrocuted in February 1989

On March 17, 1971, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told a congressional subcommittee that 19 of the killers responsible for the murder of policemen during the 1960s had been previously convicted of murder.

[hoosierskypilot]

".."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."

Interesting summation. Since the "death penalty system" is part of their judicial system, Ryan's action is a scathing indictment of Illinois law and order. Either that or Ryan is stone nuts.

[mikeb704]

Good riddance, George. Don’t let the door hit you.

[Semaphore Heathcliffe]

Mike Savage is floating the theory that Ryan did this to ingratiate himself to potential jurors in upcoming proceedings against Ryan himself.

[kidd]

I am generally against the death penalty - except for the case where an inmate cannot be controlled by the prison system. I wonder how many of these former death row inmates have committed murder in prison? How many of them have escaped or attempted escape from prison?

I think that it was irresponsible for Ryan to commute all sentences. He has put the prison population and guards at risk.

[jackbill]

First, look where Ryan made his announcement. He did it before an anti-death penalty group. He didn't have the guts to make this announcement in front of a group of victims' families.

Second, I would love to see the good people of Illinois make it so uncomfortable for him to live one more day in that state. Picket the hell out of him, every day, everywhere. Show him that he is a pariah.

[optimistically_conservative]

Notorious killers get huge break

When Gov. Ryan issued a blanket commutation to every man and woman on Death Row in Illinois, he knowingly spared the lives of some of the most vicious killers in the state's 185-year history. The governor acknowledged as much Saturday but said that fundamental flaws in the system necessitated his actions. Here are some of the most infamous killers saved by Ryan:

Fedell Caffey & Jacqueline Williams

Caffey and Williams decided they wanted a baby. So they stabbed to death a pregnant woman, Debra Evans, in her Addison apartment and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body, according to prosecutors. To eliminate witnesses, they also murdered Evans' 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 8-year-old son, Joshua. Another child, Jordan, was spared in the 1995 murder--children under the age of 2 aren't likely to be good witnesses. And the newborn boy also survived. Fortunately, Jordan's grandfather, Sam Evans, says Jordan has no recollection today of the horrors he witnessed.

Latasha Pulliam

In 1991, 6-year-old Shenosha Richard was playing in her South Side Chicago neighborhood when she was approached by Pulliam and Pulliam's boyfriend, Dwight Jordan. She went with them after they purchased her a bag of chips and promised to take her to a movie. At Pulliam's apartment, over several hours, Pulliam and Jordan sexually assaulted the girl with a shoe polish applicator and a hammer, and then used the hammer to pulverize her skull, according to prosecutors. Pulliam also beat and strangled the girl. Attorneys for Pulliam said she was drug-crazed at the time, but a court psychologist described her as "a female John Gacy" who got sexual satisfaction from hurting someone weaker than she.

Gabriel Solache

In an eerily similar case, little 2-month-old Guadalupe Soto and her toddler brother Santiago had both parents ripped away by vicious killers who wanted to steal a baby in 1998. One of them was Solache, who agreed to help kill Jacinta and Mariano Soto and snatch the baby so Adriana Mejia could pretend it was hers. Mejia targeted the Bucktown family after seeing Jacinta with the children at a local health clinic. She followed them home on a bus to see where they lived. Early the next morning, Solache, Mejia and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes surprised the family, stabbing the parents more than 60 times as the sleepy toddler looked on. Mejia and DeLeon-Reyes got life in prison.

Henry Brisbon

Brisbon and three other men decided to rob somebody. When they couldn't find the right pedestrian to rob in Kankakee, they drove toward Chicago on Interstate 57. While riding along, they came up with the idea of robbing motorists by staging phony accidents. One of the killers tricked motorists out of their cars by asking them to inspect minor collision damage, then led them to Brisbon, who brandished the shotgun and robbed and shot them. Betty Lou Harmon, 29, of suburban Darien, was forced to undress at gunpoint. She ran away, but was caught by Sanders, who led her to Brisbon, who fatally shot her in a field. An engaged North Side couple, Dorothy Cerny and James Schmidt, both 25, who were returning from a family gathering in Matteson, also were shot to death by Brisbon after being stripped of their valuables. Brisbon told the couple to "kiss your last kiss" before firing shotgun blasts into their backs as they lay on the side of the highway. But Brisbon was not on Death Row for the I-57 murders. He was put there because he used a sharpened spoon to kill another inmate while in prison.

http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/