Posted on 01/13/2003 2:32:34 PM PST by mikeb704
Don’t you believe for a minute that former (doesn’t that sound good?) Governor George Ryan doesn’t support the death penalty. On his way out, he again twisted his trusty knife into the heart of what was left of the Illinois Republican Party.
Ryan announced on Saturday that he’d commuted the sentences of the 167 prisoners on death row. This undoubtedly will win plaudits from Mike Farrell, Danny Glover, Ed Asner and other Hollywood deep thinkers. The Most Reverend Jesse Jackson, not heretofore recognized as a big GOP devotee, now thinks George deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Of course, there is a question as to if Ryan can scarf up his Nobel before he goes to the slammer for an assortment of indiscretions. A few months ago it was announced that at least four of the gov’s grown children were granted immunity to testify about dear old Dad before a federal grand jury. This cannot be a good sign.
A disappointment to me is that the feds, rather than the state of Illinois, finally decided to get the goods on Ryan. If the state had done its job like it should have, we would have been treated to the vision of George prancing around in an orange jumpsuit with DOC on the back. Talk about a morale booster.
Some say he was looking for a legacy. Others suggest he was looking to pave the way for some mercy. For himself. Still others think that George Ryan, upon tremendous thought and soul searching, genuinely moved from capital punishment adherent to death penalty foe.
OK. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and concede the last situation as true. As a candidate who embraced the death penalty and ran for governor on it, didn’t he owe the people who voted for him the opportunity to change their minds, just as he had done?
Phil Gramm was a Democrat congressman from Texas. He infuriated his party’s leaders by supporting Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in the early 1980s. When it was apparent that he’d strayed too far from Democratic economic views, he did the honorable thing. Mr. Gramm resigned his seat in Congress and stood for election again. This time as a Republican. He believed that voters deserved a chance to reconsider whether they still wanted him in office after he’d made a fundamental change.
George Ryan is no Phil Gramm, however. The Illinois governor shamefully ignored what he’d promised the people who elected him. Yet CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen sees Ryan as "a profile in courage and honor." You have to wonder what dictionary Cohen uses.
According to Ryan, "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death." Is there any mechanism managed by imperfect humans that isn’t arbitrary and capricious?
Ryan arbitrarily and capriciously made a decision that not a single person on death row deserves to die. That’s just nuts. Among those saved by Ryan are a charming couple who were sentenced for murdering a pregnant woman, her 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son, and cut the baby from her womb.
Peoria County State's Attorney Kevin Lyons points out that "The great, great majority of these people that have petitioned for commutation . . . did not even contest their guilt."
Current Governor Rod Blagojevich is a Democrat, but even he understands what a blunder Ryan had made. Calling the blanket clemency "a big mistake," Blagojevich correctly notes: "You’re talking about people who’ve committed murder."
Ryan’s new pals assert that his clemency decision means that the prisoners will be in jail for life, with no chance of parole. They know better.
In 1924, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnapped and killed a young boy in the "crime of the century." Their lawyer, Clarence Darrow, argued for, and won, life sentences for them rather than execution. They were going to be in jail forever, with no possibility of ever getting out again.
Another prisoner killed Loeb in 1936. Leopold fared somewhat better. He was released in 1958 and spent the next 13 years in sunny Puerto Rico, finally succumbing to a heart attack with his wife at his side.
So much for life sentences. Some people deserve the death penalty because it’s the only just punishment. I hope George Ryan spends at least a little of the time he’ll inevitably spend in jail reflecting on that.
I really can't believe he did that!
Wouldn't it be great if the Jetster were in residence there to give it to Georgie?
Maybe someday you'll have a little girl or a little boy who is grabbed and raped and stabbed dead by some laughing thrill-seeker. Hahahahahaa...!!! Wouldn't that be ironic?
Georgie will probably qualify for one of those Club Fed tours of duty. Unfortunately.
BTW - I think Ryan got one of the son's of my 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Fawell, indicted.
More like back to the oppressors.
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