Capital Punishment Under Siege

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by Alex Cuff/PNN Newsbrief Editor

In the last hours of his term, Republican Governor George Ryan of Illinois commuted the sentences of 163 men and 4 women to terms of life imprisonment, or less, declaring the execution system to be “broken.” This is amazing from a man who entered office as a capital punishment advocate and who voted in 1977 to revive the death penalty. "The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole," Governor Ryan said this afternoon. "Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die." This is the largest such emptying of death row in history.

This isn’t the first time that a governor has emptied death row as he departs office, but his action overshadows the 22 men Gov. Lee Cruce of Oklahoma spared in 1915, the 15 death sentences Gov. Winthrop L Rockefeller of Arkansas commuted in 1970 and the five clemency petitions Gov. Toney Anaya of New Mexico granted in 1986. It unfortunately also draws attention away from the fact that on Tuesday, Texas executed it’s first inmate in 2003 - Samuel Gallamore, 31 years old. Capital punishment opponents hope that this gesture will lead the rest of the country to reconsider whether America wants to continue to stand behind the industry of state-sanctioned death.

One day after the commutation of the sentences, Ryan also pardoned four condemned men outright. The four men Ryan pardoned had been condemned based on confessions elicited in a notorious Chicago police station that used torture to exhort confessions from suspects. Three of those inmates spent their first afternoon of freedom attending the governor's speech at Northwestern University Law School, whose Center on Wrongful Convictions led the call for blanket clemency.

For abolitionists, the fight is far from over. For nearly two weeks, attorneys, death penalty experts and family members of prisoners and victims testified before members of the board to make their case for and against commutations. This is certainly a sign that folks working to stop capital punishment are being heard, their work effectual. The fight against putting inmates on death row is also a fight against poverty and racism.

More than 75% of those on federal death row are non-white and of the 156 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by the Attorney General since 1988, 74% of the defendants were non-white. Over 90 percent of defendants charged with capital crimes are indigent and cannot afford to hire an experienced criminal defense attorney to represent them. They are forced to use inexperienced, underpaid court-appointed attorneys.

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