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Posted on 01/12/2003 7:45:56 AM PST by harpu
CHICAGO - Condemning the capital punishment system as fundamentally flawed and unfair, Gov. George Ryan on Saturday commuted all Illinois death sentences to prison terms of life or less, the largest such emptying of Death Row in history.
In one sweep, Ryan, a Republican, spared the lives of 163 men and four women who have served a collective 2,000 years for the murders of more than 250 people.
Ryan's decision, which came 48 hours before the end of his term, left murder victims' families in anguish.
"We have the death penalty every day because this kills us inside," said Dawn of intense lobbying by both sides and exhaustive review of case files, Ryan said, he was left with Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun's famous declaration in a 1994 dissent: "I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."
His move was seen by many as the most significant statement questioning capital punishment since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down states' old death penalty laws in 1972. It seemed sure to secure Ryan's legacy as a leading critic of state-sponsored executions even as he faces possible indictment in a corruption scandal that stopped him from seeking re-election.
"The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on Death Row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole," Ryan said Saturday. "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."
On Friday, Ryan took the extraordinary step of pardoning four condemned men outright. Three of those men spent their first afternoon of freedom attending the governor's speech at Northwestern University Law School, whose Center on Wrongful Convictions led the call for blanket clemency.
In the hourlong speech, Ryan quoted Desmond Tutu, Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi and Supreme Court Justices Blackmun and Potter Stewart.
Ryan told the crowd: "The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it -- I must act. Because our three-year study has found only more questions about the fairness of the sentencing, because of the spectacular failure to reform the system, because we have seen justice delayed for countless Death Row inmates with potentially meritorious claims, because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious -- and therefore immoral."
The decision brought elation and relief on Death Row at Pontiac and Menard correctional centers, and among condemned inmates' wives, mothers and children. But it left prosecutors and politicians, as well as relatives of victims, seething with frustration.
Jon Van Schaik, a Chicago firefighter whose brother Roger was one of two police officers fatally shot on a South Side street in 1979, said he hoped Ryan would soon faces charges in the corruption scandal and then "spend the rest of his life in prison."
"How can one person have all of this authority and power?" Van Schaik asked. "It's making a mockery and a farce out of our legal system and our prison system."
Most governors have broad, virtually unchecked powers for pardons and clemency, and Ryan is at least the fourth to empty Death Row as he departs office, although the scale of his action overshadows the 22 men Gov. Lee Cruce of Oklahoma spared in 1915, the 15 death sentences Gov. Winthrop L Rockefeller of Arkansas commuted in 1970 and the five clemency petitions that Gov. Toney Anaya of New Mexico granted in 1986.
Illinois Democratic governor-elect, Rod Blagojevich, said the mass commutation was "a big mistake," and Richard A. Devine, the Cook County state's attorney, said he would review legal options for undoing it, although he was not optimistic.
"What he has done has really undermined the system of criminal justice tremendously," Devine said. "The families of the victims were led to believe that decisions would be based on a careful review of the evidence in each case. That obviously did not happen."
Experts said Ryan's action would reverberate nationally, especially because it comes after an Illinois commission conducted the most extensive study of capital punishment since the death penalty was re-established in most states in the mid-1970s. But Ryan was in an unusual position to act because his political career has been extinguished by a federal investigation showing that when he was Illinois secretary of state, government employees were deployed illegally on campaigns and contracts were traded for contributions.
Ryan's decision Saturday "says you have to start all over again if you want the death penalty," said Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, comparing it to the 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision. "I don't know how many times we're going to go through a revolution like this before we conclude that there's no way for humans to make these irrevocable and infallible judgments."
Franklin Zimring, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said: "I don't know whether this will be an immediate precedent for mass change, but it is a historic landmark that will long be looked at."
Ryan, a pharmacist who was among the Illinois legislators who voted in 1977 to revive the death penalty, acknowledged in his speech the unlikelihood of his crusade. But when he found himself at the helm of a state that had conducted 12 executions and exonerated 13 Death Row inmates, one of whom came within 48 hours of the electric chair, Ryan called a moratorium on capital punishment.
Much of Ryan's talk Saturday criticized state lawmakers, who three times rejected the changes that his commission had proposed to overhaul capital punishment. He also painted a grim portrait of prison life, noting that some of the convicted killers had asked him not to lift their death sentences.
Sergio Molina, spokesman for the state corrections system, said the 167 Death Row prisoners would be transferred within a week to the general prison population, where they will have bunkmates and will be allowed to eat in dining halls rather than in their cells.
Pamela Safford, whose son, Cortez Brown, has spent a decade on Death Row, said she was stunned and speechless when she heard Ryan. "I never thought this would happen," she said. "I just thank God my son's life has been spared. It shouldn't be an eye for an eye."
Ryan also granted further relief to three of the Death Row inmates, cutting their sentences to 40 years to match those of their co-defendants.
Ryan, in what will probably be his last public appearance as governor, said he understood that the blanket commutation "will draw ridicule, scorn and anger."
"Even if the exercise of my power becomes my burden, I'll bear it, because our Constitution compels it," he said. "I'm going to sleep well tonight knowing I made the right decision."
The prudent thing for him might be to do this with one eye open.
It's all about this.
Wllie's bribe for Rich's pardon was too obvious and Ryan wasn't going to make Willie's mistake.
The commutation for, what?, several million, gives the drug cartel plenty of opportunity to get the guys out now that the threat of death isn't pushing them. The pressure is off and other folks can be bribed for other things.
Think of the recruiting effect that this will have on encouraging new criminals to enter the occupation. It is the same reason that the Israelis want Pollard, to prove to the next class of criminals that the organization will always take care of you.
This indictment will now magically go away. Freeing 163 death row inmates probably covered the one inmate whose freedom was the "pro quo" for Ryan's non-indictment "quid."
A Brilliant observation.
• "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.
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