Life and Death in Illinois

Pat Buchanan writes in a column castigating Illinois outgoing Governor George Ryan published on World Net Daily:

“A decision on who gets the death penalty in the United States is as arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning," declares Ryan. This is demagoguery. To get hit by a bolt of lightning, one need only be outdoors. To get a death sentence in Illinois, one must commit an act of deliberate murder against a citizen of Illinois.

As usual Pat is overly simple in his analysis. To get a death sentence in Illinois one must only be convicted of an act of deliberate murder. The condemned need not have actually committed it.

It is easy to be for the death penalty if one only has to deal with it in the abstract. It is far different when one must be the instrument of the execution. Prosecutor’s political futures are weighed in the balance when the decision to seek a defendant’s death is made. The heartfelt desire for revenge is laid heavily in the scale when juries deliberate. The prospect of opposition at retention elections is there to skew the vision of Judges as they don the Black Coif.

George Ryan’s journey to Damascus commenced when as a newly elected Governor a death warrant was laid upon his desk for signature. He agonized, he temporized, he received advice from his most trusted political counselor and he reluctantly signed it and continued on his way. The epiphany came when a long time resident of death row, a Hispanic citizen of Illinois, who had been thrice convicted and thrice condemned for the kidnap-murder of a little girl was cleared of the crime by DNA evidence which confirmed the confession of a different defendant. Since the death penalty was re-instituted 12 condemned men had been executed, but 13 who awaited execution had been exonerated.

Ryan is a flawed man, as are all of us. Immersed in the culture of corruption that is a bi-partisan tradition in Illinois Politics he has played the Illinois game according to the old Illinois rules. It is a game in which two of his six predecessors in office served terms in prison following their terms in the Governor’s Mansion. To suggest, as Buchanan and the Conservative pundits do, that Governor Ryan cynically issued pardons and commuted death sentences to life without parole to curry public favor is nonsense. He knew when he did it that he would alienate most of Illinois with his decision.

I believe him when he says that he could not longer bear to tinker with the machinery of death. It was a matter of conscience for a flawed man who signed one death warrant and could not repeat the act. Perhaps one reform that Illinois could add to its flawed death penalty statute is to make the Prosecutor, the Foreman of the Jury and the Judge responsible to carry out any execution that they impose.