Ironworks Gaming Forum - Illinois Death Row Clemency

Activists praise death row clemency

Jan. 12 — Human rights activists around the world on Sunday applauded the move by the governor of Illinois to spare death row prisoners from execution and urged President Bush to follow his lead by abolishing the death penalty.

ILLINOIS GOV. George Ryan cleared the state’s death row on Saturday, commuting the death sentences of the remaining 156 death-row inmates to life in prison in a move unprecedented since capital punishment was reinstated. His sweeping action, just two days before he leaves office, came a day after he pardoned four death-penalty inmates who said their confessions were tortured out of them by Chicago police.
The London-based human rights group Amnesty International, which opposes all use of the death penalty, said Ryan’s announcement offered Bush a golden opportunity.
“This is a chance for President Bush to bring the United States in line with the world trend against the death penalty,” Amnesty spokesman Kamal Samari told Reuters. “He could take a moral stand and signal that the death penalty is not the deterrent to criminals it is presented as.”

TEXAS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
Bush’s home state of Texas has come under particular scrutiny for its frequent use of the death penalty. About 150 people were put to death during the six years Bush was Texas governor. He has defended the system. Samari said Ryan’s decision marked a “significant step in the struggle against the death penalty” and urged other governors in the United States still implementing execution to follow suit.
Amnesty marked world Human Rights Day last month by drawing attention to the 600 people it said had been put to death in the United States in the last decade.
Among those executed last year were a mentally ill man, convicts who had been deprived of legal rights and three under 18 at the time of their crimes — the only three child offenders known to have been judicially executed anywhere in 2002, Amnesty said.
“It is an irony that the world’s superpower is not taking a lead on moral issues,” Samari said.

GLOBAL REACTION
Amnesty’s comments were echoed across Europe and Africa.
The Council of Europe, the region’s top human rights watchdog, hailed Ryan’s courage and conviction and said the death penalty had “no place in a civilized society.”
“I sincerely hope that this is a step toward the abolition of the death penalty in the whole of the United States,” council Secretary General Walter Schwimmer said in a statement.
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who had written to Ryan appealing for mercy to be shown to condemned inmates, welcomed the Illinois governor’s decision.
“This is fantastic news,” said a spokeswoman for Tutu’s office in South Africa. “His feeling would be that the death penalty is vengeance, it’s not justice.”
In Kenya, sociology professor Katama Mkangi who was imprisoned without trial in the 1980s for human rights work, described the commuting of the sentences as “a breath of fresh air in a rotten system.”
“His decision is a wake-up call for the United States justice system to catch up with the rest of civilization.”
The United States and Japan are the only industrialized democracies in which the death penalty is still used.

‘DEMON OF ERROR’
Ryan said on Saturday the U.S. system of capital punishment “is haunted by the demon of error — error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.” Ryan declared a moratorium on executions three years ago.
“Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates,” he said.
All but three of those sentences will go to life in prison without the possibility of parole, said the governor’s spokesman, Dennis Culloton. The three others will get shorter sentences and could eventually be released from prison, although none will be out immediately.
“He’s been talking about this for a few days, and in only a handful of cases was he considering, for a variety of reasons, not to include [them] in the commutations,” Culloton said. “Ultimately, late yesterday, he came to the decision this was the only thing to do.”
The governor sent overnight letters to the families of murder victims alerting them of the decision.Ryan chose a speech Saturday at Northwestern University to announce that he was commuting the sentences because journalism students there had investigated Illinois death row cases and helped exonerate some inmates.
Vern Fueling, whose son William was shot and killed in 1985, was outraged that the presumed killer, sentenced to death, would now be allowed to live.
“My son is in the ground for 17 years, and justice is not done,” Fueling said. “This is like a mockery.”

UNPRECEDENTED CLEMENCY
Other governors have issued similar moratoriums and commutations, but nothing on the scale of what Ryan did.
“The only other thing that would match what he’s done is in 1972, [when] the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death penalty and 600 death sentences were reduced to life with that decision,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.
The most recent blanket clemency came in 1986, when the governor of New Mexico commuted the death sentences of the state’s five death row inmates.
Maryland Gov. Parris Glendenning, who last year issued a moratorium on executions in his state, has no plans to pardon or commute the sentences of any death row inmate before leaving office Wednesday, spokesman Chuck Porcari said.

‘MANIFEST INJUSTICE’
Ryan on Friday pardoned Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Leroy Orange and Stanley Howard, all of whom had been on death row for at least 12 years. Orange was on death row the longest, more than 17 years.
All but Howard, who was convicted of a separate crime, were released Friday.
“I have reviewed these cases, and I believe a manifest injustice has occurred,” Ryan said. “I have reviewed these cases, and I believe these men are innocent. I still have some faith in the system that eventually these men would have received justice in our courts, but the old adage is true: Justice delayed is justice denied.”
“We have evidence from four men, who did not know each other, all getting beaten and tortured and convicted on the basis of the confessions they allegedly provided,” Ryan said. “They are perfect examples of what is so terribly broken about our system.” Ryan spread the blame in an hour-long speech Friday, calling the state’s criminal justice system “inaccurate, unjust and unable to separate the innocent from the guilty, and at times very racist.”
He blamed “rogue cops,” zealous prosecutors, incompetent defense lawyers and judges who ruled on technicalities rather than on what was right. He also criticized the Legislature for failing to enact his proposals to reform the death penalty system.
Ryan announced the pardons in a speech at DePaul University, home to an anti-death penalty center founded by Andrea Lyon, a lawyer who represents Hobley.
Sources advising Ryan told NBC News that the governor was up until 1 a.m. making his decision and that calls of support included one from former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Source: MSNBC

[ 01-12-2003, 05:45 PM: Message edited by: Grojlach ]