Ryan Weighs Clemency for All on Ill. Death Row

Illinois Gov. George Ryan said he is considering whether to commute the sentences of all 163 inmates on the state’s death row.

The moderate Republican acknowledged the possibility during a recent symposium, a disclosure that adds to this state’s roiling debate over the death penalty. It comes as an Illinois commission he appointed is poised to release recommendations on what to do about the state’s death penalty.

The 68-year-old governor imposed a moratorium on executions in January 2000. Ryan, who approved Illinois’ last execution in March 1999, ordered the moratorium after several inmates condemned to die were found to have been falsely accused.

Ryan described events leading up to that decision and his evolving views on capital punishment in a speech last weekend at a University of Oregon law school symposium. He cited statistics showing that since Illinois reinstated executions in 1977, 12 people have been executed, while 13 death row inmates were exonerated by the courts.

“We freed 13 innocent men who were nearly strapped to a gurney in the state’s death chamber so that fatal doses of poison could be injected into their bloodstreams. That is the ultimate nightmare,” Ryan said in the speech Friday night, adding that even 99% accuracy isn’t good enough.

“If government can’t get this right, it ought not be in the business of passing such final, irreversible judgment,” said Ryan, who is leaving office in January.

During a subsequent question-and-answer period, Ryan was asked whether his faith was so shaken in the legal system that he would commute all of the sentences that put 159 men and four women on Illinois’ death row.

“He said, ‘We’re looking at that, we might do that,’ ” said Dennis Collatin, Ryan’s press secretary, who was at the event.

If Ryan follows through, it would be the most sweeping reversal of death sentences since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that capital punishment was “cruel and unusual punishment” because juries were arbitrary in imposing it--overturning the death sentences for 600 inmates nationwide.

States began rewriting the laws, and in 1976 the Supreme Court allowed executions again under statutes that require a second jury hearing to impose the death penalty. There are more than 3,700 inmates awaiting the death chamber in 38 states.

Aides say they already have given Ryan files on all the death row inmates in anticipation of a report from the Commission on Capital Punishment, a 14-member panel he appointed in May 2000.

Death penalty opponents praised Ryan’s comments, calling them part of his philosophical “progression” from a staunch supporter of capital punishment.

Commutation “would be the only reasonable and conscionable thing to do given the errors that have occurred in the Illinois death penalty system,” said Nancy Bothne, Midwest regional director of Amnesty International in Chicago.

Death penalty proponents, however, said Ryan’s remarks were unconscionable--as a wholesale condemnation of the judicial system. “This is the first time we’ve heard a governor indicate to some extent that he might be willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this,” said Michael Rashford, president of the Sacramento-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which filed briefs in support of the death penalty before the Supreme Court.