Outgoing Gov. George Ryan thanked Northwestern students and faculty for their work to clear wrongfully convicted prisoners at a Wednesday address, where he also pardoned a woman whose conviction was overturned in 2001.
“It amazes me that it took a student to end this nightmare,” Ryan said of the case of Paula Gray, who was seated near him in the Law School’s Lincoln Hall.
Gray’s pardon was a surprise to most, if not all, of the nearly 450 people gathered on the Chicago Campus to hear Ryan speak. His address capped the 10th annual Public Interest Law Week, which focused on issues such as reform of the criminal justice system.
Gray’s false confession led to her conviction and the convictions of four men, known as the “Ford Heights Four,” for the 1978 murder of Lawrence Lionberg and rape and murder of his fiancee, Carol Schmal. In 1996, Medill students found evidence buried in a police report written shortly after the men were arrested that indicated four other men might have been responsible for the crimes.
“I don’t know how anyone can be opposed to righting the wrongs against someone like Paula Gray,” Ryan said.
David Protess, a Medill professor, and Robert Warden, associate director of the Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, chronicled the case in their book “A Promise of Justice.”
Before Ryan spoke many other individuals talked about the work of students and professors on wrongful conviction cases.
But each speaker balanced praise for students and professors with commendations for Ryan’s institution of a death penalty moratorium in Illinois and lobbying for justice system reforms. Before Ryan leaves office in January, he will determine whether to commute the sentences of any or all of the state’s death row inmates.
University President Henry Bienen briefly addressed the crowd before Ryan, calling the governor “a man of great courage and conviction.”
Other speakers compared Ryan to Nelson Mandela, Robert Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln.
Ryan returned their praise with equal fervor.
“You do what’s right and you avoid what’s wrong,” he said. “What I did really pales in comparison to what you (Law Prof. Lawrence Marshall and Protess) and the students sitting behind me did.”
NU’s Center on Wrongful Convictions has been involved with nine of the 13 death row inmates exonerated in Illinois since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Protess and Medill students have been involved in some of those cases as well as several others.
“I don’t believe there could be any higher calling for a journalist or a lawyer than to save someone on death row from dying,” Ryan said. “Students at Northwestern’s law and journalism schools will always hold a special place in my heart for what they’ve done.”
Ryan said he voted to reinstate the death penalty while serving in the state House of Representatives because he believed in the system. But now he sees the system as flawed.
Ryan said nothing has changed since he instituted a death penalty moratorium in January 2000 and appointed a commission to examine and recommend changes for the criminal justice system.
“Time after time the system failed,” he said. “Everything I believed about the criminal justice system was brought into question by the wrongful conviction of Anthony Porter.”
Shawn Armbrust, Medill ’99, worked on Porter’s case with Protess and other Medill students during her senior year and compared the experience to “being in a John Grisham novel.”
She and other students re-enacted the crime and discounted an eyewitness’ testimony that was critical to Porter’s conviction. After four months of research, the Protess team found the real killer and obtained a videotaped confession.
“It was shocking to me as a 21-year-old kid at Northwestern,” Armbrust said. “It’s great that we as students have had the chance to work on these cases. But it’s also kind of scary.”
Marshall spoke passionately, his voice cracking at times, about the work of students and volunteer lawyers on Porter’s case and others like it.
The controversial clemency hearings that Ryan is holding in his final months in office are necessary to determine that no more innocent men and women languish on death row, Marshall said.
“We owe this to the defendants,” he said. “We owe this to their families and perhaps, most of all, we owe this to the the families of the victims, whose only interest should be the truth.”
