Scholars Advise Illinois Governor on Issuing Blanket Clemency

As Illinois Gov. George Ryan decides whether to commute the sentences of some death row inmates, hundreds of the nation’s law professors want him to know that he would be justified in granting clemency to all of them.

The legal scholars planned to deliver that opinion today in an open letter to Ryan bearing more than 400 of their signatures, the latest act in a hard-fought public relations battle over Illinois’ death row inmates.

Ryan halted the state’s executions nearly three years ago after courts found that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted since the state resumed capital punishment in 1977.

Now the governor is reviewing clemency requests from more than 140 death row inmates and has said he will rule before he leaves office Jan. 13. About 160 inmates are on death row.

In the letter, the legal scholars take exception to some death penalty supporters’ view that Ryan should consider clemency only on a case-by-case basis.

“We feel compelled to share with you our considered judgment that, in our country, the power of executive clemency is not so limited,” the letter said. “To the contrary, where circumstances warrant, executive clemency should be and has in fact been used as a means to correct systemic injustice.”

The governor has described blanket commutation of death sentences to life without parole as being “on the back burner,” but he will consider the professors’ letter, spokesman Dennis Culloton said.

Cook County State’s Atty. Richard Devine, one of those most publicly opposed to a blanket clemency, said the professors have missed the point.

“We have never disputed that the governor has unlimited powers to grant clemency, but we believe that granting blanket clemency would be an abuse of that power,” said Devine’s spokeswoman, Marcy Jensen.

The professors’ letter doesn’t take a position on whether the governor should commute all death row inmates’ sentences.

New York University law professor Anthony Amsterdam said the professors are sending the letter to Ryan “to make him feel that he can consult his own conscience and decide what he thinks is right.”

Amsterdam, who organized the letter-signing campaign, said the power of clemency is broad enough “to allow the governor to use his own sense of justice and right in issuing commutations.”

New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya commuted the sentences of all death row inmates in 1986. Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller did it in 1970.