Opponents of Death Penalty Express Hope

Jan 9, 2003

 CHICAGO - Gov. George Ryan's decision to deliver speeches at two law schools that have been at the center of the fight against capital punishment has raised expectations that he will announce more clemencies before his term ends Monday.

Ryan speaks at DePaul University on Friday and Northwestern University on Saturday. The addresses are widely expected to cap Ryan's three-year campaign to highlight flaws in the state's death penalty system, which began when he declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000.

"I don't think he would come and give a speech that was going to greatly disappoint us," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Northwestern University Center on Wrongful Convictions.

Ryan, a Republican, has said he will announce by the end of his term whether he will grant clemency to any or all of the state's 160 death row inmates. He leaves office at noon Monday.

Ryan's suggestion last year that he might grant blanket clemency to every death row inmate prompted nearly all of them to seek mercy. That led to a controversial series of hearings in the fall that replayed some of the state's most gruesome murders. After the hearings, Ryan said he was no longer inclined to grant blanket clemency.

He has been under relentless pressure ever since from people on both sides of the issue � families of inmates and crime victims, law professors, prosecutors and politicians.

In recent weeks, Ryan has returned to anti-death penalty activism, twice announcing pardons of wrongfully convicted people who were no longer in jail.

DePaul University is home to an anti-death penalty center, while Northwestern has spearheaded the anti-death penalty movement in Illinois. Scholars at its law school have fought on behalf of inmates, and Northwestern journalism students conducted investigations that freed death row convicts.

Even as a corruption scandal plagued his administration, Ryan, who did not seek re-election, could always count on a warm welcome at Northwestern.

Increasing the optimism of death penalty opponents is the invitation extended by Ryan to relatives of death row inmates to one or both of the speeches.

"The governor's office invited me to the speech (Friday) and they're giving me a special seat," said Costella Cannon, the mother of Frank Bounds, who died of a heart attack in 1998 while on death row.

FINANCIAL TIMES

 Illinois takes stand on death row reform

By Caroline Daniel in Chicago

January 9 2003 

 With less than three days left in the job as governor of Illinois, George Ryan has no intention of going quietly. Instead he is about to make the most significant announcement of his term in office, when he will reveal whether he will commute the sentences of nearly 160 death row inmates.

 The unprecedented announcement - expected Friday or Saturday - has put Illinois centre-stage in the debate on death penalty reform. If he grants a blanket commutation to life in prison, it would mark him out as one of the leading death row reformers, sending a powerful message across America about the reliability of death row convictions.

 Although there have been instances where politicians invoked executive authority to override convictions - Abraham Lincoln reduced the sentences of Union soldiers charged with desertion during the civil war, for example - there is no precedent of mass clemency for death row cases.

 "I can't think of any statement condemning the manner in which the death penalty is carried out in this country that would have as much magnitude as a blanket commutation," said Locke Bowman, legal director of the MacArthur Justice Center in Chicago. "It would be a powerful assertion by a governor."

 Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, an educational group, agrees. "The rest of the country will be watching. Many states have similar problems, with poor legal representation, incompetent evidence from prison snitches and coerced confessions that have led to wrongful convictions."

 Further problems were underlined in a study this week from the University of Maryland of 6,000 murders in Maryland, which, like Illinois, introduced a death penalty moratorium.

 The study found extensive racial disparities, such as offenders who killed white victims were twice as likely to get the death penalty than for black-on-black killings.

 What also makes Illinois unusual is the man at the heart of it. Mr Ryan, a Republican, is an unlikely reformer. He entered office a supporter of capital punishment but in 1998 he stayed the execution of Anthony Porter, 48 hours before he was due to die for a double murder. Two months later another man confessed to the crime. Mr Porter was released, becoming one of 13 people exonerated in Illinois since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1977.

 Mr Ryan says the close call made him reassess his views, introduce a moratorium and instigate a commission, which suggested 85 "indispensable reforms".

 The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law has also kept up the pressure for reform. The problems led the governor to question whether convictions under an unreformed system should stand.

 His public musings gave rise to a wave of petitions for clemency, which led to "clemency on speed" in October 2002, when the prison review board heard 142 murder trials over just nine days. It is these cases that the governor intends to address.

 He does so in the face of intense personal criticism. Death penalty advocates point to the fact that Mr Ryan is leaving office with a tarnished political reputation and see cynical legacy-building, not justice, as his driving motivation.

 Indeed, the trial of his former chief of staff, Scott Fawell, who is accused of using state money to fund political campaigns, is scheduled to begin on Monday. Federal prosecutors are also circling the governor, investigating how much he knew.

 Whatever Mr Ryan's conclusions, Scott Turow, a member of the Chicago commission and crime novelist, says: "If he commutes sentences, people will paint him as lawless and it will not help him if he ever finds himself in a courtroom. The fact that he is willing to brook that risk shows he is a remarkable guy."

 But Mr Turow does not expect other governors to copy him. "It is not likely to be an act with many succeeding runs in US politics. Political courage results in this country in recrimination and rebuke. That may be Governor Ryan's legacy."