Gov. George Ryan stood in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall in May 2000 and told a packed crowd he could no longer allow use of the death penalty in Illinois until he could be sure it was safe.
“I’m not sure we can ever have a perfect system, but there are some problems that are very apparent in our system that we have to change,” said Ryan, who declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000 — a ban that still stands.
Ryan is now stepping down after one term, and death penalty reform still is a major issue in this year’s volatile gubernatorial race. At the polls Tuesday, voters will choose Ryan’s successor — either Republican Jim Ryan and Democrat Rod Blagojevich, both of whom have pledged to continue the moratorium pending reform.
Gov. Ryan instituted the moratorium partly due to investigations by Medill Prof. David Protess and his journalism students, which found evidence that several men on death row were not guilty of their crimes. Ryan ordered an independent examination of the state’s ability to prevent wrongful convictions in death penalty cases.
Since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977, 13 cases have been overturned — nine because of the work of Protess’ classes and Northwestern Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions.
On Monday the state Prisoner Reform Board finished an unprecedented series of clemency hearings that have seen 142 death-row cases reopened. Some of the cases were argued by the Center on Wrongful Conviction’s lawyers.
The board will make non-binding recommendations to the governor next month.
The hearings drew national attention, and initially the governor said he was considering granting blanket clemency to all 142 prisoners. He has since said he will examine each case separately.
The hearings come just six months after the Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment issued its report concluding that “the death penalty has been applied too often in Illinois since it was re-established.”
The report recommended that 85 steps be taken to ensure the fair use of capital punishment. Suggestions included videotaping all police questioning in capital crime cases; requiring that all capital cases not be based solely upon testimony of a single eyewitness; mandating that the judge agree with a jury’s death sentence, and narrowing the range of crimes covered.
Jim Ryan, the Republican candidate, has said he would support continuing the moratorium and would invest money in death penalty reform.
“We must seize this unprecedented opportunity to make the changes that will ensure the public’s confidence in our ultimate form of punishment,” said a statement issued by Ryan’s campaign.
But Ryan does not wholly agree with the commission’s report. He favors keeping sentencing options open in cases of murdered children or terrorism. The commission urged that the death penalty apply mostly for multiple murders.
Blagojevich, the Democratic candidate, has said he would keep the moratorium until problems are addressed.
“Should I become governor, I will take real steps to make real reforms in a broken death penalty system,” Blagojevich said in a statement.
Protess is confident that the moratorium will stay, he wrote in an e-mail to The Daily. The more pressing issue, he said, is whether the legislature will follow the commission’s suggestions.
Gov. Ryan has drafted legislation containing most of the suggested reforms. If the legislature adopts the reforms, Protess pledged that he and his students will continue to “investigate miscarriages of justice with the same fervor.”
When the governor visited NU in 2000, he credited Protess and his students for their work in the Ford Heights Four case — where an investigation resulted in the overturning of four men’s convictions in 1996 for the double murder of a couple — and the case of Anthony Porter, who was set free in 1999 and came as close as 50 hours to execution in a conviction that was based on a single eyewitness account.
“As students, you’ve probably done more with your career than some longtime journalists have done in their lives,” Gov. Ryan said. “You’ve got a lot to be proud of. I’m proud of you for what you’ve done.”
Michelle Madigan, Medill ’02 and a current graduate journalism student, took Protess’ class last spring. She and the other students investigated a 1970s attempted murder case in Michigan. Information from the students’ investigation was included in appeals filings by the inmate’s defense attorney.
Madigan said students bring a different perspective to the process that prosecutors cannot duplicate. Their background in journalism and their approachability make the students better able to find evidence — something that was apparent in her class and in the efforts that helped bring the Illinois death penalty moratorium.
“I learned new eyes can reveal new mistakes — and reveal new truths,” Madigan said.
