The photograph below is of outgoing Governor George Ryan of Illinois, who just spared the lives of all 163 men and four women on death row in Illinois.
In writing about Governor Ryan's struggles with the death penalty, it is usual to point out that it's easy for him to be brave. He has spent most of his term fighting off corruption charges, after all, and his political life is through.
But it is very hard indeed to change your mind when the facts turn out to contradict your lifelong beliefs. Almost no one is both brave and honest enough to do it. Governor Ryan, a capital punishment man for most of his career, might have found it much easier to survive those old corruption charges -- they dated from before his election -- if he had turned his back on the mounting evidence that Illinois was killing innocent men.
As a governor George W. Bush, too, was faced with overwhelming proof that the courts and prosecutors of his state were notoriously cruel, callous, careless and frequently wrong in the application of the death penalty. He dealt with the problem by signing every death warrant they put in front of him -- man, woman or child.
But Governor Ryan was surprised, and then shocked, and then he looked into the matter. And then he made the hard choice that probably never even occured to Bush as an option. He asked himself, in effect, what Jesus would do. And did it.
Lyndon Johnson's father once told him there were only three worthwhile things for a man to be: a teacher, a preacher, or a politician. Once in a while I can see what he meant.
I have put Governor Ryan's complete death penalty speech up on this site. It is the opposite of eloquent. It is not learned. It is not subtly reasoned like the poisonous swill on the same subject that issues regularly from Antonin Scalia of Opus Dei and the U.S. Supreme Court. It is just plain, honest fare from a good man finding his way.
I hope you will take time for it.
Posted by Jerome Doolittle at January 11, 2003 09:02 PM
One interesting thing to note, which you may not know about, is the extent to which Scott Turow has been lobbying against capital punishment in the state of Illinois.... (I like to think of Turow as the 'literate' John Grisham.) ;-)
Posted by: C. Maoxian on January 11, 2003 11:43 PMThe link to Governor Ryan's speech is broken; should be
http://badattitudes.com/MT/GovRyan.html
Posted by: Carl Manaster on January 12, 2003 7:08 AMGovernor Ryan has just done a fine and noble thing by sparing the lives of the people on death row in Illinois. It is predictable that the peanut gallery of hate filled death mongers who always seem to be highly visible in America will shriek and scream their heads off at this news. It is much harder to vote for life than to vote to death in America. Governor Ryan has done the decent thing and he should be given all the credit and all the support that humanity can give him. Indeed by sparing the lives of people Ryan appears to be in stark contrast to the unelected idiot Bush whose contempt for human life is so obvious and so manifest that he has actually claimed that he has the right to, like medieval Kings, yell "off with his head" and actually have it done. I have rarely had kind words to say for any Republican but now I must backtrack. Ryan has shown himself to be a decent man and I certainly hope he is given all the honor that a decent man deserves.
Posted by: Jerry Greenberg on January 12, 2003 2:39 PM How about the innocent people incarcerated that are not on death row.
they die a different death by having their families & jobs distroyed by a ever increasingly corrupt system. to call it the " criminal" justice system is appropiate
Thank you, Gov. Ryan. It's a start.
The link is fixed. Thanks, Carl. One of these days maybe I'll remember not to forget to check every link on posting it, even the ones I know perfectly well are correct.
I did know about Scott Turow, yes. He's another one who started out a death penalty backer but eventually yielded to the facts. Skip's point is an important one, and almost never made. If the proportion of innocent prisoners is so high on death row, it must be just as high in the rest of the prison.
Posted by: Jerry Doolittle on January 12, 2003 5:35 PM
Gov. Ryan did the right thing.
That's because there are lots of innocent people on death row. But let's not kid ourselves about what we mean by "lots": a tiny percentage, maybe one to five percent. As Gov. Ryan found, most -- 95 to 99 percent -- of the people on death row or serving life sentences for violent crimes are sick killers.
Yes, the criminal justice system is imperfect, because it is run by humans. But if all the people on death row or in jail for life were released back into society, they clearly would in short order kill far more victims than the small number of innocent people whose lives are ruined by unjust convictions.
It is a human tragedy of great proportions that these innocent lives are ruined by unjust death penalties or long prison terms. We need to take every possible step to find and end these injustices.
But predators must be caged.
I'm with Mario Cuomo on this one: I'm for the death penalty. Not by injection, not by electrocution -- death by incarceration.
Posted by: Dave T. on January 12, 2003 9:53 PMThank you Jerry.
Posted by: close watcher on January 13, 2003 8:28 AM