Chicago Sun-Times

'Dead men' walk for cause of justice

In 1998, Curtis Kyles found justice in a Louisiana courtroom, where new evidence freed him from death row. On Monday, he found Justice on the other side of La Grange Road. Wearing a thin leather jacket and a borrowed scarf, Kyles marched against a biting wind into the southwest suburb of Justice as part of a 37-mile relay from Joliet to Chicago.

 Dubbed "Dead Men Walking," the march featured 30 former condemned men from around the country. Starting in the predawn darkness at Stateville Correctional Center--once the place where Illinois prisoners were executed--the march featured the ex-cons walking in shifts to deliver a letter to Gov. Ryan at the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop.

 That letter, part of a campaign urging Ryan to commute all death sentences in Illinois to life in prison without parole, asks the governor to "heed the lessons of our ordeals." In accepting the letter, a Ryan spokesman suggested to reporters the governor was not inclined to issue a blanket commutation. Kyles, 43, who still lives near New Orleans, acknowledged "it's much warmer back home," but he came to Chicago because "the injustice that was done to me, I don't want to see it done to nobody else." Kyles, now a bricklayer, spent more than 15 years behind bars for the 1984 murder of a woman in a store parking lot. He was freed when witnesses recanted and new evidence pointed to another man.

 The march was sponsored by Northwestern University School of Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions.On Monday night, Ryan attended a play, "The Exonerated," at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, 777 N. Green, in which Hollywood actors portrayed some of the wrongly convicted.

 The actors, including Richard Dreyfuss and Danny Glover, also presented Ryan with a letter asking that he give life sentences to the 140 death row inmates in Illinois. In an interview, Dreyfuss said he does not oppose capital punishment. "If there was a perfect system, I would be more than happy to see [murderers] killed--and tortured," he said. But that system does not exist now, he said. 

Appeals Process in Illinois Includes the Exonerated

 The sky was black and the air frigid, yet Sue Gauger's palms were sweating as she arrived at Statesville Correctional Center just after 4 this morning.

 Mrs. Gauger could not help but relive the humiliating pat-downs and shoe searches before her visits to Gary Gauger, the boy she met in 1st grade, fell in love with after he was convicted of murdering his parents, and married upon his exoneration. This morning, Mr. Gauger, who spent 22 months in Statesville's execution-house before his release in 1996, walked from just below its watch towers carrying a letter that implored Gov. George Ryan to commute the sentences of the 160 people on the state's death row.

"I've never seen the front gate, except in the old movie, `Call North Side 777,'" Mr. Gauger, 50, said of the prison as he began a unique relay walk.

31 men who were wrongly convicted of capital crimes and later freed from death rows around the country carried the letter 37 miles from Statesville to Governor Ryan's office here. Starting in the wee hours did not bother Mr. Gauger because, he said, "I haven't been able to sleep since I got arrested."

The relay, dubbed "Dead Men Walking" and taking almost 14 hours to complete, was the latest in a string of creative lobbying tools employed by one side or the other in the death penalty debate in Illinois recently.

Governor Ryan, who declared a moratorium on executions three years ago and appointed a commission that proposed 85 measures to overhaul capital punishment, ordered a series of clemency hearings this fall for nearly all the state's death-row inmates. Now, he faces the defining decision of his tenure: How many of those 160 souls should he spare before leaving office Jan. 13?

"These people are literally walking proof that the effort to divide people into guilty and innocent, problem cases and not-problem cases, doesn't typically work," Lawrence C. Marshall, legal director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, said of the walk's participants.

Mr. Marshall, who was Mr. Gauger's lawyer and organized the walk, added that "if the governor thinks that he's going to be able to create 2 piles, the book of life and the book of death, and confidently determine who belongs in which, history shows that he will make profound errors, fatal errors."

After the state Prisoner Review Board sat through hundreds of hours of wrenching testimony from victims' relatives during the clemency hearings in October, the governor held two intense sessions this month in which those relatives begged him to let the death sentences stand.

Even so, 21 retired judges, and nearly 1,000 lawyers, have signed letters calling for commutation. E-mail messages, for and against, flood in daily to the governor's office.

Meanwhile Mr. Ryan, who declined to be interviewed for this article, reviews the 160 case files, and the board's confidential recommendations, even during dinner and while flying in the state plane. He has said he is unlikely to grant a blanket clemency, but will not give a hint as to whether commutations to life in prison may be dispensed in the single, double or triple digits.

"He asks a lot of questions about cases or about things happening in the s ystem, but he clearly is still in deep deliberation," said Dennis Culloton, the governor's press secretary. "It's really hard to handicap."

Today's march followed a Sunday session at Northwestern Law School, during which 36 men who had been released from death row in 13 states lighted candles and reminded the audience that people had once been certain of their guilt, too.

The speakers wore sweatpants and 3-piece suits, leather jackets and argyle sweaters, cowboy hats and chunky gold cross pendants. They told of their 2, 5, 6, 11, 19 years on death row. One came within 50 hours of execution. Another, 36. A 3rd, just 15.

Tonight, many of the freed men were in the audience for the Chicago premiere of the documentary play "The Exonerated," with the actors Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover and Mike Farrell portraying Mr. Gauger and several other men who had been part of the day's march.

After the curtain call, Mr. Dreyfuss told the crowd that the reason for the play's presentation was to "recognize the leadership and plain courage of Governor Ryan," prompting a lengthy ovation. Mr. Marshall then presented the walkers' letter to the governor.

John Gorman, spokesman for the Cook County prosecutor, whose office has led the fight against commutations, called the day's events "just another public-relations stunt."

Indeed, Mr. Marshall carefully stage-managed the relay route, where tracking television cameras � and news helicopters � seemed as important as the calligraphied letter the men carried in a cardboard tube.

"Give each other a hug," Mr. Marshall instructed two walkers, Carl E. Lawson and Dale Johnston. Mr. Lawson had been acquitted in his third trial for the murder of his roommate's son in East St. Louis, Ill., and Mr. Johnston was freed in 1990 after 6 years on death row in Ohio. Mr. Lawson arrived in running pants, but his walking companion, Willie Raines, another wrongfully convicted inmate, showed up in a grey suit, with red shoes, shirt, tie and felt hat. Roberto Miranda, sentenced to death in 1984 in Nevada and released in 1996, wore a sweater and wrapped a borrowed jacket around his ears to block the wind.

Mr. Raines and Thomas Kimball, who became the 101st condemned man to be exonerated when he was released from Pennsylvania's death row in May, both walked after staying up all night, remnants of revelry on their breath.

"If they say walk 100 miles, that's what I do," Mr. Raines said as he hit the still-dark trail, cigarette in hand.

Some men tucked the letter under their arms as they rushed through the cold, while others held it aloft like an Olympic torch. As they walked, they shared their stories, of endless appeals and manufactured evidence and the quandary of what to put on a job application that asks about criminal convictions but has no place to explain exoneration. "We can never get back what was taken from us, never," said Ronald Jones, who spent 10 years in Illinois prisons before DNA evidence helped clear him.

Leaving behind the gates of Statesville in the town of Romeoville southwest of Chicago, the relay went through 5 other small towns before arriving here just after noon. Exonerated men strode across the Des Plaines River, past houses draped with Christmas lights before dawn, saw the sun rise over a cemetery, embraced one another at roadside diners.

As they passed the criminal courts building at 26th and California Streets in Chicago where several had been sentenced to death, and entered downtown, the relay became a march, with several men choosing to walk 2, 5, 8 miles with their comrades.

Led by Anthony Porter, whose exoneration inspired Mr. Ryan to impose the moratorium, 11 exonerated men and as many supporters walked the last mile to the State of Illinois Building, arriving around 5:30 p.m.

"I just hope they do this next time in the summer," said Michael Graham, who served 13 years for a double murder in Louisiana, and now lives in Ohio with his fiance.

 The Rev. George W. Brooks, a longtime opponent of capital punishment walking by his side, said: "Let's hope we don't have to do it another time."

March from Death Row -Ex-inmates carry plea to governor from Stateville

Amid the cold predawn darkness Monday, Gary Gauger turned his head to take one last look at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill before embarking on a short journey that not long ago would have been unfathomable to him.

 "Look at it," Gauger said to a few reporters and his wife, Sue, who had gathered along the shoulder of Illinois Highway 53 across from the prison.

 "That place really is Gothic, like something out of a Batman movie. Unreal."

 And with that, at 4:40 a.m., Gauger took the 1st step of a 37-mile relay walk joined by more than 3 dozen other freed death row inmates. Each former prisoner walked one or two miles with a singular purpose: He was a messenger charged with delivering a letter to Gov. George Ryan imploring the governor to commute the death sentences of all inmates on Illinois' death row to life without parole.

 In his final month in office, Ryan, who in 2000 imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois, is considering the clemency petitions of more than 140 death row prisoners.

 In recent weeks, Ryan has received enormous pressure from both death penalty advocates and foes.

 Prosecutors have held news conferences, and families of victims met with the governor to urge him not to offer a blanket clemency to all death row inmates.

 Monday's walk by former prisoners, dubbed "Dead Men Walking," was part of the National Gathering of the death row Exonerated, a 2-day conference of freed death row inmates. The event was originally planned for 2003 but expedited in order to address the clemency issue facing Ryan. It was designed to help focus public attention on the problems plaguing America's death penalty system by showing those who had been freed from their sentences.

 Monday's relay walk began at Stateville, the prison that houses Illinois' execution chamber, where Gauger and some of the other walkers would been killed had they not been released from their sentences. The relay ended 12 1/2 hours later, shortly after 5 p.m., at the Thompson Center in the Loop, where freed inmate Anthony Porter handed the letter to a representative from Ryan's office.

 "We are the exonerated," the letter began. "We have each walked in the valley of the shadow of death. The courts and the public were certain that we were guilty and that we had forfeited our right to live. Only through miracles did the truth emerge. The truth proved we were victims of wrongful convictions."

 Many of the men were exonerated through DNA evidence while others received new trials or were released when someone else confessed to the crime they had been found guilty of committing.

 The gathering concluded Monday night with a play at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts. The performance, titled "The Exonerated," starred Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover, Jill Clayburgh and Mike Farrell as former death row inmates discussing their time awaiting execution.

 After the show, Ryan said he would meet with families of death row inmates before making his decision.

 Organizers are hoping the 2-day public plea will prompt Ryan to commute all the death sentences, something they believe will carry them another step on their quest to abolish capital punishment.

 "Gov. Ryan has the opportunity here to do something bold and courageous," said Northwestern University law professor Lawrence Marshall, as he walked a couple of paces behind Gauger on the first 2-mile leg of the relay.

 Marshall is legal director of Northwestern Law School's Center for Wrongful Convictions, the lead sponsor of the gathering.

 But Ryan's spokesman, Dennis Culloton, who accepted the letter from Porter, said the governor is reviewing each death penalty case on an individual basis and a blanket clemency is "on the back burner."

 "He has been reviewing each of these cases for 3 years," Culloton said.

 Conference organizers chose a relay walk for 2 reasons: It harked back to the days of civil rights marches and it was a non-verbal way for the former prisoners to express themselves. After all, Marshall explained, many of the men had only minimal education and are not adept public speakers.

 Many of the former prisoners said they still face a public stigma and wrestle with nightmares from their years of incarceration and preparation for death.

 Freddie Lee Pitts, who spent 9 1/2 years on Florida's death row before being pardoned by former Gov. Reubin Askew, said he would like to see the conference grow into an annual event. Pitts walked mile 15 of the relay along Archer Avenue in Willow Springs.

"I'd walk to hell and back for these guys," Pitts said. "Come to think of it, I have been to hell and back."