Illinois Governor Pardons Four Death Row Inmates
A big TPRS salute goes to outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan for having the moral courage to not only admit that the death penalty as currently administered DOES NOT WORK, but also for doing something about it. Ryan yesterday pardoned four death row inmates whose murder confessions had been extracted by torture.
Ryan has been the only chief executive of a state to stand up and admit that the system used by states to administer and carry out the death penalty is fundamentally flawed. The sad thing is that so few other Governors have had the political and moral cojones to do the same thing.
CHICAGO, Jan. 10 – A conservative Republican from a staid Midwestern state, outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan has become the unlikely poster boy for reforming capital punishment.
To the chagrin of prosecutors and glee of death penalty opponents, Ryan today pardoned four men who he said had been beaten into confessing to murders they did not commit. He chastised prosecutors, judges and legislators, for looking the other way even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the capital punishment system is broken.
And with a second major death penalty speech scheduled for Saturday afternoon, he has hinted strongly that he will commute many of the death sentences of more than 150 remaining inmates on Illinois Death Row. "The system has proved itself to be wildly inaccurate, unjust, unable to separate the innocent from the guilty and, at times, racist," Ryan said at a news conference here at DePaul University.
While he has been hailed by death penalty opponents around the world for his actions--Ryan imposed the nation's first moratorium on executions three years ago--critics complain that the governor is merely trying to deflect public attention from his own political troubles. And prosecutors contend that Ryan, a pharmacist by trade, is failing crime victims.
"For the governor to grant pardons to these convicted murderers is outrageous and unconscionable," said State's Attorney Richard A. Devine. "By his actions today, the governor has breached faith with the memory of the dead victims, their families and the people he was elected to serve."
I can understand the plight of the families of victims. Nothing can or will bring back their loved ones. There are no "winners" in this scenario, other than perhaps the four innocent men who were pardoned. The ugly reality that is the death penalty is that it is skewed against poor minorities. If you are accused of capital murder, and are unfortunate enough to be an indigent African-American or Hispanic male, the odds are stacked against you. In any system, that is just plain WRONG.
Regardless of your feeling on the death penalty, and mine are decidedly mixed, it is difficult to make a compelling argument for the efficiency and accuracy of the system for imposing it. Until and unless we can develop a system that is blind to both color and class, we will continue to put innocent men and women to death because it is politically expedient. The death penalty is not the sort of thing where you can do the "Oops, my bad..." thing. It's a decidedly final solution, so if a mistake or worse, official misconduct, is discovered later...too damn bad. There is no un-executing someone.
I know that law-and-order Conservatives will likely decry my feelings on this as the rant of just another bleeding-heart, soft-on-crime Liberal. That attitude does an injustice to those innocents who have been executed over the years- and don't tell me that hasn't happened. Or do you define the killing of a few innocent men as the price society must be willing to pay to maintain the perception of order and safety? While an eye for an eye may be a noble goal, what happens when the State exacts that retribution on a man who, it turns out later, is innocent? Who goes back to that man's family and does the "Oops...our bad..." song and dance?
Governor Ryan is on the right track, and I agree with his contention that the system needs to be fixed. If it cannot be fixed, then perhaps the system really does need to be abolished. I don't pretend to have the answer to this moral dilemma, but I do know that executing innocent men is wrong, and nothing any politician can say or do will make it right.
A wise man once told me that there is no right way to do the wrong thing. I applaud Governor Ryan for having the balls to do the right thing. It's just unfortunate that other Governors will not follow his example (like our own Governor Goodhair, f'rinstance...).
UPDATE: Governor Ryan has decided to clear out Illinois' death row, commuting the death sentences of all 156 inmates currently on death row. Again, there are no winners, but this should serve as further evidence of the inadequacy and unfairness of the current system. If you want a death penalty, then work for something that is both color- and class-blind. What we have now is neither.
