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ILLINOIS:
Gov. George H. Ryan (R) has decided to effectively impose a moratorium
on the death penalty in Illinois until an inquiry has been conducted
into why more death row inmates have been exonerated than executed since
capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.
A senior aide to the governor said Ryan will announce on Monday that he
plans to block executions by granting stays before any scheduled lethal
injections are administered, a move that would keep condemned prisoners
under the death sentence but would indefinitely postpone their execution.
"There are innumerable opportunities along the way for serious errors,
and the governor wants to take a pause here," Ryan's press secretary,
Dennis Culloton, said today. "He wants to be absolutely sure the system
is working and that only the clearly guilty are being executed."
Culloton said Ryan is convinced the death penalty system in Illinois is
"fraught with errors" and "broken" and should be suspended until
thoroughly investigated. Since capital punishment was reinstated 23
years ago, 13 death row inmates have been cleared of murder charges,
compared to 12 who have been put to death. Some of the 13 inmates were
taken off death row after DNA evidence exonerated them; the cases of
others collapsed after new trials were ordered by appellate courts.
One inmate, Anthony Porter, spent 15 years on death row and at one point
came within 2 days of being executed before a group of student
journalists at Northwestern University uncovered evidence that was used
to prove his innocence. Porter was released from prison last year.
Ryan's decision would make Illinois the 1st of the 38 states with
capital punishment to halt all executions while it reviews its death
penalty procedures. The Nebraska legislature passed a moratorium on
executions last year but it was vetoed by Gov. Mike Johanns (R).
Ryan did not declare a general moratorium, Culloton said, but will stay
executions on a case-by-case basis. He said that if Attorney General Jim
Ryan (R) put forward a death warrant and scheduled an execution date,
"the governor will just stay that indefinitely." Culloton said he
believes the attorney general shares Ryan's doubts and might not even
schedule any more executions.
Culloton said the governor "still believes capital punishment is a proper
societal response," but was deeply troubled by the number of condemned
prisoners who have been exonerated in Illinois in recent years and by a
recent series by the Chicago Tribune that examined nearly 300 death
penalty cases since 1977.
The newspaper reported that 33 death row inmates had been represented at
trial by attorneys who had been disbarred or suspended and that about
half of the state's capital cases had been reversed for a new trial or
sentencing hearing. The Tribune also reported that in 46 cases,
prosecutors had used testimony from jailhouse informants, which is
widely believed to be the least reliable evidence in criminal cases.
Last month, Cook County prosecutors dropped charges against a former
Chicago police officer who had been sentenced to death largely on the
testimony of a jailhouse informant. However, the former policeman faces
kidnapping charges in Missouri in an unrelated case.
Last week a Chicago-Kent College Law School professor and his students
filed a motion in state Supreme Court asserting that they had uncovered
evidence that a death row inmate was wrongfully convicted of a 1982
murder on testimony by witnesses who now say Chicago police detectives
coerced them into falsely identifying the suspect as the killer. The
commander of the detective squad was fired in 1993 for allegedly
directing the torture of several suspects, who made confessions to
murder charges that were proved to be false.
Culloton said Ryan will appoint a special commission to study the state's
capital punishment system in general and specifically determine what
happened in the 13 cases in which defendants were found to have been
wrongly convicted of capital crimes.
"The Porter case is a very good example. Porter and the cumulative
effects of the system breaking down is what convinced him to just put
things on hold," Culloton said. "The governor bears the burden of
having the last say, and there's no margin for error."
Since becoming governor a year ago, Ryan has faced only one decision in a
death sentence case. He decided not to block the March 1999 execution of
a man condemned for a mutilation murder and he later said he agonized
over the decision. However, his fellow Republicans have generally favored
capital punishment, and Ryan is Illinois campaign chairman for Texas Gov.
George W. Bush, whose state executes more people than any other.
The Illinois House of Representatives approved a moratorium on
executions last year but it failed in the Republican-controlled Senate.
(source: Washington Post)
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