Blago will likely manage to do worse things than Ryan, but only because he won't have a Republican legislature to hold him in check. Were George Ryan somehow to receive a second term (but with all other office-holders as they will be) I don't think the results would be any worse than under Blago's term.
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:
Danny Edwards
To make the point that he has been personally touched by the horror of murder, Ryan on Saturday described the murder of an old family friend, Kankakee businessman Stephen B. Small, in 1987, in a kidnapping plot.
Danny Edwards, who at the time was a small-time drug dealer and electrician in Kankakee, was found guilty of burying Small alive in a wooden box.
Edwards made an air hole in the box and apparently thought Small could survive for some time while he--Edwards--attempted to extort a $1 million ransom from Small's wealthy family. But Small died within four hours of being buried.
While conceding that the evidence against his client was "overwhelming"--Edwards was seen building the box, and his fingerprints were found inside--defense attorney Thomas Allen expressed surprise at the quick guilty verdict, calling the jury "the coldest I've ever seen."
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.
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.
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.
Luther Casteel
At JB's Pub in Elgin in 2001, Casteel was booted out for harassing female customers and employees. Roaring drunk and enraged, he shot straight home, shaved his hair into a mohawk and changed into military fatigues, armed himself with several guns and returned to the bar.
Screaming, "I am a natural born killer," he shot bartender Jeffrey Weides and customer Richard Bartlett to death and wounded 16 others before being wrestled to the ground by bar patrons and employees.
At his trial, Casteel almost dared a Kane County jury to impose the death penalty.
"I'm not someone who asks for mercy or pity for my actions," he said during a stunning half hour of testimony. "I have absolutely no fear of anything anyone can put upon me."
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.