Illinois’ Exonerated to Urge Clemency for All on Death Row

As Republican Gov. George Ryan considers commuting some, possibly all, death sentences in Illinois to life terms before he leaves office in mid-January, about 40 former death row inmates who were wrongfully convicted plan to meet here today and Monday to urge him to spare the lives of all 160 condemned prisoners.

The exonerated will not argue that the death penalty should be abolished on moral or philosophical grounds, or even suggest that it may not deter crime. Rather, they will emphasize what Ryan himself has said: The system is so flawed, it cannot be trusted. Holding themselves up as examples, they hope, will prove powerful evidence of systemic failure.

Anthony Porter plans to be there. He spent 16 years on Illinois’ death row for two murders he did not commit, at one point being fitted for his burial suit and coming within two days of execution. Gary Gauger plans to attend too. He was convicted in 1994 of murdering his elderly parents and spent 33 months on death row before two motorcycle gang members were accused and later convicted of the slayings.

“I was lucky,” Gauger, 50, said. “That’s such an absurd thing to say, but I was very lucky. Many people helped me. I feel I should help others. There’s no doubt in my mind there are other innocent people on death row.”

Ryan and his aides on the death penalty issue also believe there may still be some innocent people among the condemned.

The two-day gathering is being organized at Northwestern University School of Law by the Center on Wrongful Convictions, a collection of lawyers, teachers and students that in just a few years has uncovered numerous wrongful convictions and become perhaps the nation’s most influential anti-death penalty group.

Technically, the center’s mission is not to oppose the death penalty but to exonerate those wrongfully convicted. Having helped free several Illinois inmates, however, the group now argues that regardless of how one feels about death as punishment, the systems now in place in the United States cannot guarantee that innocent people will not die.

“Even after I began to work on the Anthony Porter case, I thought he was guilty,” said Lawrence C. Marshall, the center’s legal director. “I was wrong. The system has proven itself to be wrong time and again.”

A group of Northwestern journalism students, performing fairly basic detective work, helped exonerate Porter after they tracked down the real killer in the 1982 murders. Alstory Simon, who was living in Milwaukee, confessed on videotape to shooting 19-year-old Marilyn Green and 18-year-old Jerry Hillard, and has since been sentenced to 37 1/2 years in prison.

The gathering will begin today at the law school, with remarks by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and attorney Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project at New York’s Cardozo School of Law.

Monday morning, Gauger will begin walking from Stateville Penitentiary in Joliet, where many of Illinois’ executions have been carried out, with a letter urging Ryan to grant clemency to all Illinois death row inmates. The letter will be handed off to some of the other 102 death row inmates from across the country who have been exonerated, making its way 37 miles to Chicago.

On Monday night, the center will stage “The Exonerated,” with actor Mike Farrell playing Gauger, Danny Glover playing Delbert Tibbs, who spent five years on Florida’s death row for a murder he did not commit, and other Hollywood notables.

Ryan is expected to attend, watching with just a month left to decide whether to commute the sentences of all 160 death row inmates, commute some of them or leave the decision to Gov.-elect Rod Blagojevich.

In 2000, Ryan announced a state moratorium on executions following a string of exonerations. The groundbreaking move has since been followed by Maryland, and other states are considering such action.

Since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, 12 men had been executed and 13 death row inmates had been exonerated. At clemency hearings for most of the inmates held over the summer, victims’ families lambasted Ryan for even considering clemency.

Following the outcry, Ryan said he probably would not grant a blanket clemency. Since then, however, Ryan has said repeatedly that no one who was convicted by such a flawed system should die by it.

“He can’t condemn the system and then allow potentially innocent people to be executed,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. “All this would have been for nothing.”