Posted on 01/12/2003 10:23:43 AM PST by Nachum
Using words like "liar" and "criminal" and "dictator," family members of murder victims and prosecutors across the suburbs were nearly unanimous in their condemnation of Gov. George Ryan for his commutation of death sentences.
Complaints ranged from the venue in which Ryan chose to make his announcement to accusations that he had promised families not to grant blanket commutations.
"This should be a criminal act," said Dawn Pueschel, sister of murder victim Dean Pueschel. "This is a crime to do what the governor has done."
"He spit in our faces," said Katy Salhani, sister of murder victim Debra Evans.
claims; because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious -- and therefore immoral -- ‘I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,'æ" Ryan proclaimed, quoting Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun's dissent to the constitutionality of executions.
Ryan's remarks roused a packed lecture hall at the law school of Northwestern University, whose professors and students have helped free numerous innocent men from death row. The audience included international media, parents, spouses and children of the once-condemned, and numerous men freed from death row.
Ryan, who voted to reinstate Illinois' death penalty in 1977, had done a nearly full reversal by 2000, when he halted all executions after it became clear the state's capital punishment system was troubled.
Thirteen men had been exonerated from death row at that point, one more than the number of those executed, whom Ryan said Friday he "hoped" were guilty. Only one man was executed under Ryan's tenure.
Ryan on Saturday also pointed to figures that nearly half of the 300 death sentences handed down in Illinois had been reversed for a new trial or resentencing.
"Nearly half," Ryan said Saturday. "How in God's name does that happen? In America, how does it happen? I've been asking this question for three years, and nobody's given me an answer. As I stand here today, no one's given me an answer."
After announcing he would consider blanket commutation last year, a marathon series of more than 140 clemency hearings was held before the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. In the end, the board recommended clemency for 10 cases, but state laws don't require Ryan to follow that.
They featured tearful testimony from relatives of victims, many of whom accused Ryan of forcing them to relive the crimes. They urged Ryan to let the state kill those convicted of killing their loved ones. They also brought the message to Ryan in news conferences and meetings with Ryan.
But Saturday, Ryan questioned their reasoning.
"I was struck by the anger of the families of murder victims," he said. "To a family, they talked about closure. They pleaded with me to allow the state to kill an inmate in its name to provide the families with closure. But is that the purpose of capital punishment? Is it to soothe the families? And is that truly what the families experience?"
After declaring a moratorium, Ryan appointed a commission to study the problem. Its more than 80 recommendations included videotaping police interrogations and creating a statewide panel to determine which crimes are death penalty-eligible, as opposed to the discretion of each county prosecutor, as it is now.
None of the recommendations has been adopted, and Ryan said that played a part in his decision, which went into effect early Saturday for most inmates.
His speech, which included references to Abraham Lincoln and South Africa's Archbishop Desmond Tutu, drew several standing ovations and praise from supporters.
Ryan commuted 164 death sentences to life without parole and reduced three others to 40 years in prison. Ryan said he took the action to make those three prisoners' sentences match their codefendants'.
"George Ryan could have passed the buck," said Professor Lawrence Marshall, legal director for Northwestern's Center on Wrongful Convictions. "Instead, he realized that the constitution vested in him this solemn duty. Gov. Ryan, you have taught the world so much."
Gov.-elect Rod Blagojevich disagreed with Ryan's move.
"I think a blanket clemency is a mistake," he said. "It is wrong. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this."
Blagojevich said his administration, which takes power Monday, will conduct a review of the governor's clemency powers, although no legal experts believe Ryan's commutations can be undone.
Ryan's move Saturday signifies the most significant attack on capital punishment since 1972, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.
But since then, 36 states have reinstated the sentence.
Other governors have issued commutations, but nothing on the scale of what Ryan has done. The most recent precedent for blanket clemency came in 1986 when the governor of New Mexico commuted the death sentences of the state's five death row inmates.
"We've been saying forever that the death penalty is fatally flawed," said Jed Stone, lawyer for several men sentenced to death, including Ronald Kliner, formerly of Palatine. "And now we have the highest elected official in the state standing firmly with us."
Kliner has maintained his innocence, but many on death row have appealed for mercy on other grounds.
Citing the fact that many convicts did not claim innocence, victims' relatives blasted Ryan Saturday.
"All he talked about is the death penalty issue, which, for this governor, is to be expected, said Sam Evans of Bridgeport, whose daughter Debra Evans was killed in her Addison apartment in 1995, along with two of her children. A fetus also was cut from Evans' womb, and that child is now 7 years old.
Jacqueline Williams and Fedell Caffey were convicted of the crime and sentenced to die.
"He is not very concerned with individuals, just with issues," Evans said.
Ryan acknowledged that some may never forgive him, even those close to him.
He said even his own wife, Lura Lynn, was angry at him for one case in particular. He choked up when he spoke of Steve Small, a Kankakee businessman and friend of the Ryans who was buried alive and suffocated to death. Daniel Edwards was convicted and sentenced to die for that crime.
"My wife even was angry and disappointed at my decision like many of the families of other victims will be," he said.
In fact, you did say that. Here's what you said:
There have been several cases when people were executed although they were innocent.
There have not been ANY innocent people executed. The fact that 17 were released shows the system worked.
As to what Christians can and cannot do regarding the death penalty, Jesus said "Render to Caesar that which is Caesar's."
The death penalty, for certain crimes, is perfectly, morally acceptable, your bleeding heart notwithstanding.
God did decide........a long time ago. When He was giving the 10 commandments to Moses in Exodus 20.... He gave an addendum in Exodus 21:
12 "Anyone who strikes a man and kills him shall surely be put to death. 13 However, if he does not do it intentionally, but God lets it happen, he is to flee to a place I will designate. 14 But if a man schemes and kills another man deliberately, take him away from my altar and put him to death. 15 "Anyone who attacks his father or his mother must be put to death. 16 "Anyone who kidnaps another and either sells him or still has him when he is caught must be put to death. 17 "Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.
It's pretty clear what God expects US to do with these people. When you try to blur the lines...you get into trouble. We have an obligation and a committment to keep the general public safe from certain individuals in our society, that are willfully evil. God didn't say to keep these murderers comfortable behind walls for life and burden the rest of society for their care. HE said to kill them to keep evil from our midst.
The state has no rights, but it does have the power, delegated to it by the people, to execute such criminals. that said, anyone who thinks they can read any prohibition of capitial punishment into the Constitution, has got a few screws loose, or an agenda, probably both.
This is SICKENING. Each case should be judged on it's own merits. No 2 cases are alike.
The liks of John Wayne Gacey would have been commuted under this arrangement. Some people are so EVIL they should be put to death. Use all the evidence including DNA. When it is proven they've committed these heinous crimes put them to death.
Because I can see taking many justifiable, principled actions to protect the life of an innocent man. That's honorable and correct by anyones standards.
Ryan however has merely taken them off death row, that's not right. If they are truly innocent then the state should release them.
What Ryan has actually done here is call them all "a little guilty"
That's not good enough, imo. Either they did it and they deserve the death penalty as proscribed by law or they didn't and they should be set free immediately.
This conflict cannot be allowed to stand. It's immoral for him to behave in this manner.
I support the Governor in his quest to make sure that all death row criminals get fair trials, and that only the guilty meet the ultimate justice.
I resnt this governor for thwarting the will of the people of the State Of Illinois by acting within his power for clemency but to have done so in such an irresponsible way. There is no way what he did is justified as he has said to each victom, juror, judge, prosicutor and lawyer that justice does not matter when a jury has found someone guilty beyond a resonable doubt. While constitutional right to do what he did his actions were more anti-constitutional in their effect.
Notorious killers get huge break
When Gov. Ryan issued a blanket commutation to every man and woman on Death Row in Illinois, he knowingly spared the lives of some of the most vicious killers in the state's 185-year history.
The governor acknowledged as much Saturday but said that fundamental flaws in the system necessitated his actions.
Here are some of the most infamous killers saved by Ryan:
Danny Edwards
To make the point that he has been personally touched by the horror of murder, Ryan on Saturday described the murder of an old family friend, Kankakee businessman Stephen B. Small, in 1987, in a kidnapping plot.
Danny Edwards, who at the time was a small-time drug dealer and electrician in Kankakee, was found guilty of burying Small alive in a wooden box.
Edwards made an air hole in the box and apparently thought Small could survive for some time while he--Edwards--attempted to extort a $1 million ransom from Small's wealthy family. But Small died within four hours of being buried.
While conceding that the evidence against his client was "overwhelming"--Edwards was seen building the box, and his fingerprints were found inside--defense attorney Thomas Allen expressed surprise at the quick guilty verdict, calling the jury "the coldest I've ever seen."
Henry Brisbon
Brisbon and three other men decided to rob somebody. When they couldn't find the right pedestrian to rob in Kankakee, they drove toward Chicago on Interstate 57. While riding along, they came up with the idea of robbing motorists by staging phony accidents.
One of the killers tricked motorists out of their cars by asking them to inspect minor collision damage, then led them to Brisbon, who brandished the shotgun and robbed and shot them.
Betty Lou Harmon, 29, of suburban Darien, was forced to undress at gunpoint. She ran away, but was caught by Sanders, who led her to Brisbon, who fatally shot her in a field.
An engaged North Side couple, Dorothy Cerny and James Schmidt, both 25, who were returning from a family gathering in Matteson, also were shot to death by Brisbon after being stripped of their valuables.
Brisbon told the couple to "kiss your last kiss" before firing shotgun blasts into their backs as they lay on the side of the highway.
But Brisbon was not on Death Row for the I-57 murders. He was put there because he used a sharpened spoon to kill another inmate while in prison.
Fedell Caffey & Jacqueline Williams
Caffey and Williams decided they wanted a baby. So they stabbed to death a pregnant woman, Debra Evans, in her Addison apartment and cut her nearly full-term fetus from her body, according to prosecutors.
To eliminate witnesses, they also murdered Evans' 10-year-old daughter, Samantha, and 8-year-old son, Joshua.
Another child, Jordan, was spared in the 1995 murder--children under the age of 2 aren't likely to be good witnesses. And the newborn boy also survived.
Fortunately, Jordan's grandfather, Sam Evans, says Jordan has no recollection today of the horrors he witnessed.
Gabriel Solache
In an eerily similar case, little 2-month-old Guadalupe Soto and her toddler brother Santiago had both parents ripped away by vicious killers who wanted to steal a baby in 1998.
One of them was Solache, who agreed to help kill Jacinta and Mariano Soto and snatch the baby so Adriana Mejia could pretend it was hers. Mejia targeted the Bucktown family after seeing Jacinta with the children at a local health clinic. She followed them home on a bus to see where they lived.
Early the next morning, Solache, Mejia and Arturo DeLeon-Reyes surprised the family, stabbing the parents more than 60 times as the sleepy toddler looked on. Mejia and DeLeon-Reyes got life in prison.
Luther Casteel
At JB's Pub in Elgin in 2001, Casteel was booted out for harassing female customers and employees. Roaring drunk and enraged, he shot straight home, shaved his hair into a mohawk and changed into military fatigues, armed himself with several guns and returned to the bar.
Screaming, "I am a natural born killer," he shot bartender Jeffrey Weides and customer Richard Bartlett to death and wounded 16 others before being wrestled to the ground by bar patrons and employees.
At his trial, Casteel almost dared a Kane County jury to impose the death penalty.
"I'm not someone who asks for mercy or pity for my actions," he said during a stunning half hour of testimony. "I have absolutely no fear of anything anyone can put upon me."
Latasha Pulliam
In 1991, 6-year-old Shenosha Richard was playing in her South Side Chicago neighborhood when she was approached by Pulliam and Pulliam's boyfriend, Dwight Jordan. She went with them after they purchased her a bag of chips and promised to take her to a movie.
At Pulliam's apartment, over several hours, Pulliam and Jordan sexually assaulted the girl with a shoe polish applicator and a hammer, and then used the hammer to pulverize her skull, according to prosecutors. Pulliam also beat and strangled the girl.
Attorneys for Pulliam said she was drug-crazed at the time, but a court psychologist described her as "a female John Gacy" who got sexual satisfaction from hurting someone weaker than she.
I wonder how he will reconcile his conscience--if indeed, his conscience reaches there--for the unknown (but greater than 0) number of innocents who will be murdered due to this deterrent being voided.
Death penalty gains unusual defenders
USA TODAY ^ | 1/06/03 | Richard Willing
NEW YORK — Robert Blecker sat quietly as other professors ticked off their reasons for opposing the death penalty: It's unfair to blacks. It doesn't really deter crime. Innocent people could be executed.
But Blecker, a professor at New York Law School, was having none of it. When it was his turn to speak at the recent death-penalty forum at John Jay College, he summed up his support for executions in three words: "Barbara Jo Brown."
Blecker then launched into a staccato description of the 11-year-old Louisiana girl's slaying in 1981, how she was abducted, raped and tortured by a man who later was executed. The story drew gasps from a crowd accustomed to dealing in legal theories and academic formulas. "We know evil when we see it, and it's past time that we start saying so," Blecker said later. "When it comes to the death penalty, too many in academia can't face that."
For years, professors and civil rights leaders have led the charge against the death penalty, raising questions about its fairness that caused two states to suspend executions. But now death-penalty supporters have found some unlikely allies: a small but growing number of professors and social scientists who are speaking out in favor of the ultimate sanction.
Challenging themes that have been the foundation of the anti-death penalty movement, about a dozen professors and social scientists have produced unprecedented research arguing that the penalty deters crime. They also are questioning studies that say it is racially biased, and they are attacking one of the anti-death penalty movement's most effective talking points: that more than 100 people released from death row during the past 30 years were "innocent."
The researchers say that only about a third of those released from death row could show they were innocent of murder, and that the rest were released for other reasons, often legal technicalities. The researchers say that those convicts' names have remained on the "innocent" list to exaggerate the case against the death penalty.
The pro-death penalty researchers are still a tiny minority in U.S. academia, which Blecker guesses is "99%-plus" against executions. But the researchers are changing the nature of the death-penalty debate.
Justice Department lawyers have cited their work in legal briefs defending the death penalty. Republican senators have used the new research to try to stave off proposals to make it more difficult to execute inmates. Some death-penalty supporters, noting that more than two-thirds of Americans back capital punishment, say the research validates the views of a relatively silent majority.
And victims' rights groups that have felt excluded from the debate over executions say the professors give them moral support.
"It's been easy for the media to dismiss (death-penalty supporters) as just a rabble that wants to 'hang 'em all,' " says Dudley Sharp, resource director for Justice For All, a victims' rights group in Houston. "Now we've got research, respectability — things that have always been conceded to the other side. It's more of a real debate."
Some death-penalty foes say the new research is a desperate reaction to successful efforts to stop executions. "If the public wasn't concerned with (the possible execution of) innocents, if courts and the Congress and state legislatures weren't beginning to get involved again, (pro-death penalty academics) wouldn't be noticed," says Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a group in Washington, D.C., that opposes capital punishment.
Fairness of executions questioned
Executions had been declining in the USA for years when states halted them in 1967, in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling on whether death-penalty laws violated the constitutional ban on "cruel and unusual punishment."
The court banned executions in 1972, ruling that the death penalty was being imposed arbitrarily. But the court reinstated the penalty four years later, backing new laws that guided judges and juries in imposing death sentences. Since then, more than 800 killers have been executed in the USA.
Soon after executions resumed, studies suggested that blacks were more likely than whites to receive death sentences, especially when their victims were white. Other studies compared murder rates in the 38 death-penalty states with lower rates in the 12 states that don't have the penalty, and concluded that capital punishment does not deter homicides.
In 1993, a U.S. House of Representatives panel led by a death-penalty foe, Rep. Don Edwards, D-Calif., found that 68 people had been released from wrongfully imposed death sentences during the previous 20 years. The report was the basis for the list of 102 "innocents" that anti-death penalty groups now promote.
The idea that innocent people had been sent to death rows across the nation was politically potent, and capital punishment foes exploited it. The Edwards list was taken over by the Death Penalty Information Center, which has added to the list 34 death-row inmates who have been exonerated. Among those were 12 who were freed by DNA tests done on evidence years after their convictions.
The center doesn't vouch for the validity of the initial 68 cases. To be added to the center's "innocents" list, a condemned inmate must have his conviction overturned and be acquitted at retrial. Ex-prisoners also are added to the list if prosecutors don't pursue a retrial.
The ongoing campaign against the death penalty has been effective. Analysts say it likely contributed to a dip in the still-strong public support for capital punishment. (Surveys in October said that about 70% of Americans back the death penalty, down from 80% in 1994.)
Meanwhile, the governors of Illinois and Maryland have suspended executions in their states to study whether the death penalty is being imposed fairly.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that states cannot execute killers who are under 18 when they commit their crimes and that juries, not judges, must impose death sentences. In the latter case, Justice Stephen Breyer called studies of the death penalty's impact on deterring crime "inconclusive."
And last July, a U.S. district court judge here declared the federal death penalty unconstitutional, a decision that applied only in his court and that was appealed by the Justice Department. Judge Jed Rakoff based his ruling on research, including the list of 102 "innocents," that he said suggested there is a high risk that inmates could be wrongly executed. A U.S. appeals court panel reversed that ruling on Dec. 10, saying that the matter should be left to the U.S. Supreme Court. That decision, too, is likely to be appealed.
"There's no way to underestimate the importance of the innocence issue," Dieter says. "It's created an irresolvable concern on the part of the public."
How innocent are they?
But how innocent are the "innocents"?
Ward Campbell, a deputy attorney general in California, said in a study last year that at least 68 of the 102 ex-death row inmates on the "innocents" list don't belong there. Campbell says some on the list had their convictions reversed because of prosecutors' errors or misconduct but seem certain to have committed the crimes of which they were convicted. Others avoided retrials or were acquitted because witnesses died, evidence was excluded for legal reasons, or because they were in prison for similar crimes.
In some cases, death sentences were overturned because the convict was an accomplice, not the killer. Campbell found that nine "innocents" were exonerated because courts said the evidence against them was valid but did not establish guilt beyond a "reasonable doubt."
Eight of those on the list were not actually on death row when they were exonerated; two others never received a death sentence, Campbell said. In more than a dozen cases, death sentences were overturned only because later Supreme Court rulings invalidated a state's death-penalty statute.
For Campbell, a recent addition to the list shows the problem with its standards: Larry Osborne was convicted of breaking into a Louisville couple's home in 1997 and killing them. He won a new trial because the conviction was based in part on grand jury testimony from an accomplice who died before Osborne's trial. An appeals court said the testimony should not have been admitted as evidence because Osborne's lawyer could not cross-examine the dead witness. Osborne was acquitted in a second trial. He made the "innocents" list in August.
Dieter says convicts whose sentences have been overturned "truly are innocent, in the legal sense." A spokesman for Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sponsor of a bill aimed at eliminating wrongful convictions, says that "quibbling over numbers" misses the point.
"Even the staunchest defenders of the status quo must admit that ... innocent people have been sent to death row," Leahy spokesman David Carle says.
Pro-death penalty professors say the number of innocents does matter.
"The idea that 100 innocent people have just missed execution has undermined the public's confidence" in the death penalty, says Barry Latzer, a political scientist at John Jay College. "If it's substantially fewer, it's not nearly as powerful a story."
Latzer and his colleagues are challenging death-penalty foes on other fronts as well.
John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee, acknowledges that African-Americans appear to be overrepresented on death row, where they account for about 42% of the prisoners, compared with about 12% of the U.S. population. (Since 1977, 57% of those executed have been white; 35% have been black.)
McAdams notes the widely held belief that black defendants are more likely to receive the death penalty than whites convicted in similar slayings. But he says that doesn't take into account that blacks make up nearly 50% of all murder victims, and that all but a few are killed by other blacks. Blacks who kill blacks, he argues, are far less likely to get the death penalty than whites, blacks or Hispanics who kill whites.
"Why are the lives of black victims less valued?" McAdams asks. "There's a subtle kind of racism going on here, and it's got to do with the victims of crime, not how we treat the perpetrators." He realizes that his analysis has a provocative implication: that more black killers should be executed. He favors "more executions generally."
But fellow death-penalty supporter Blecker says that the death penalty should be reserved for the "worst of the worst, the ones almost everyone can agree are worthy."
Death-penalty supporters also say there is plenty of evidence that executions deter homicides.
A study last year by researchers at Emory University in Atlanta examined the nearly 6,000 death sentences imposed in the USA from 1977 through 1996. The authors compared changes in murder rates in 3,000 U.S. counties to the likelihood of being executed for murder in that county. They found that murder rates declined in counties where capital punishment was imposed. The researchers said a statistical formula suggested that each execution saved the lives of 18 potential victims.
Recent studies at the University of Houston and at the University of Colorado at Denver had similar findings. Blecker, who is researching deterrence, says they square with what he found in interviews with 60 killers. "They are cognizant of whether they are operating in a death-penalty state before they pull the trigger," he says. "They're operating in the real world, not the realm of political theory."
To McAdams, the debate over deterrence is unnecessary. "If you execute a murderer and it stops other murders, you've saved innocent lives," he says. "And if it doesn't, you've executed a murderer. Where's the problem?"
Academics who back executions are gaining some acceptance. Senate Republicans countered Leahy's bill by citing research from pro-death penalty academics. The bill was approved by the Judiciary Committee but is stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, Blecker says he's getting asked to more academic conferences on the death penalty — usually as the only voice in favor. " 'A lion in a den of Daniels' is one way I've been introduced," he says.
How do you know? Do you know where they were in their appeals processes? How many times had their cases been reviewed?
The Northwestern law students are part of a group opposed to the death penalty.
The system is working, friend.
Ryan's blanket pardons, however, will do more to stiffen the spines of governors like Rick Perry in my own state of Texas.
There have been DNA reviews, and a commutation, just last month, of a mentally retarded death row inmate.
But he will not, under any circumstances, commute the sentence of every criminal, especially since Texas does not have life without parole.
False dichotomy. God has authorized the state to carry out his justice in the civil realm. And that includes the power to put to death ("the sword"). This is what the Scriptures teach:
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
--Romans 13:3-4
The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence". Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.I know you think it's just your opinion against his in this case too, but I believe the Holy Father has a better claim to know what is Christian than you do.It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
- John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae
Didn't God himself call for the death penalty in certain cases, in effect saying: 'Send them to me'
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