Gov. Tries to Change Death Penalty

Aug 24, 2002

By RYAN KEITH,

SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  Gov. George Ryan took legislation meant to punish terrorists with the death penalty and altered it to include new safeguards in the state's troubled capital punishment system.

 The changes he made Friday include having the state Supreme Court more closely review each death sentence, barring the execution of mentally retarded defendants and recommending that confessions in capital cases be videotaped.

 Ryan drew national attention two year ago when he put a moratorium on executions in the state. He said the reason was in the statistics: Since 1977, 12 Illinois inmates had been executed, while 13 other death row inmates were released after it was shown they had been wrongly convicted.

 The Republican governor said in June that he might even propose abolishing capital punishment in Illinois.

Now lawmakers must decide whether to accept Ryan's changes, let the anti-terrorism bill die or try to find enough votes to reverse the governor's action.

 This is the second time Ryan has rejected the legislation, which has been pushed by Attorney General Jim Ryan in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The governor and the attorney general are not related.

 The anti-terrorism measure would give police greater power to listen in on suspects' telephone conversations, make it a felony to take a firearm on an airplane and let the attorney general freeze terrorists' assets.

 It also would make terrorism a death penalty offense, something the governor says is covered by existing laws. Ryan used his amendatory veto power to remove that section from an earlier version of the bill, but lawmakers put it back in.

 This time, Ryan left the death penalty but added highlights of the 85 reforms recommended by his capital punishment commission in April.

 Legislators will consider Ryan's changes in November. They can accept them with a simple majority vote or override them with a three-fifths majority in each chamber.

 Ryan applauded the attempt to crack down on terrorism but said he could not expand the death penalty until his reforms receive "real legislative attention."

 "Given our state's capital punishment track record, there can be little doubt that reform should take precedence over expanding death penalty eligibility in what most believe to be a flawed system," he said in his veto message.

 "Failure to do so can only serve to demonstrate that Illinois is more concerned with making a symbolic statement with an unnecessary death penalty provision than with ensuring that additional innocent persons do not end up on death row and executed at the hands of the state."

 Sen. Ed Petka, a sponsor of the anti-terrorism measure and strong supporter of capital punishment, said he is confident legislators will reject the governor's changes.

 "His pen got a little exercise, but we'll have the last say on this," said the Republican from Plainfield, southwest of Chicago. 

St.Louis Post-Dispatch

Many support death penalty moratorium

 Even as 2 of Illinoisans reject the leadership of Gov. George Ryan, an almost equal proportion still supports one of his most controversial legacies: the moratorium on the death penalty.

 Those are the findings of a Post-Dispatch/KMOV-TV poll of 814 Illinoisans conducted last week.

 Ryan, a Republican, isn't running for re-election, largely because of a lingering bribes-for-licenses scandal among his former underlings at the Illinois secretary of state's office.

 Ryan hasn't been implicated, but the scandal has badly damaged his credibility with the public. The poll, conducted by Zogby International of Utica, N.Y, charted a disapproval rate for Ryan of 69 %, which is consistent with previous polls.

Ryan, once a staunch death-penalty supporter, declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois in January 2000, after it was revealed that 13 men had been wrongly sent to the state's death row.

 Though the issue has sparked bitter political feuds within the Legislature and the Republican Party, the moratorium has been consistently popular with the public, in part because of publicity over near-executions of innocent inmates.

 The Zogby poll found that 68.3 % of the poll respondents support the moratorium, while 26.1 % oppose it.

 Most of those respondents said the issue was either "important" or "very important" to them in choosing a political candidate. Fewer than a third of the respondents said the issue wasn't important.

 Pollster John Zogby noted that Ryan's moratorium -- which has made him a virtual celebrity among death-penalty opponents nationwide and abroad -- hasn't made a dent in low approval ratings at home.

 "The voters give the governor high marks on the death penalty, yet Gov. Ryan has never been able to translate that into how voters see him overall," Zogby said.

 Respondents to the poll tended toward support of the moratorium regardless of their other political leanings.

 "I support it," said Larry Frosch of Morris, who plans to vote Republican in November. He said he generally favors the death penalty, but "there have been too many mistakes made in the past" in Illinois.

 Frosch's support for the moratorium doesn't translate into support for Gov. Ryan. Asked what he thought of Ryan, he said: "Not much."

 In fact, the supporters Ryan still has include liberal Democratic death-penalty opponents. "I didn't think he was so bad -- it just looks like he's got dirty pals around him," said poll respondent Kenneth Hope of Northbrook, an anti-death-penalty Democrat. "I was very pleased with his moratorium."

 Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rod Blagojevich and Republican opponent Jim Ryan (who isn't related to the governor) both are death-penalty supporters, but both also have said they support the moratorium until it's shown that Illinois' capital punishment system is safe for the innocent.