February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
February 2-8. 2000
For several years, law students and professors at Northwestern University have been carefully reviewing death-penalty cases in Illinois. Their remarkable and shocking findings have resulted in nine men being freed from death row. In all, 13 men who were sentenced to death in the state since 1977 were found to have been wrongly convicted. Ultimately, all were exonerated and freed.
On Monday, Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a death-penalty supporter, took the politically courageous step of imposing a moratorium on executions in his state. He cited Illinois’ "shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row."
In announcing his decision, Ryan, a Republican, referred to a recent series in the Chicago Tribune that looked at nearly 300 cases in which Illinois courts had imposed the death penalty. The Tribune found that, upon appeal, 130 of those cases were reversed and new trails or sentencing hearings ordered.
The possibility that innocent men and women would be put to death has always been the strongest argument against the death penalty. It has, of course, been further bolstered by the Northwestern and Tribune findings. What these and other studies over the years have shown is that death-row inmates are and have been largely poor, often minority, and frequently poorly represented in court.
Far too many federal lawmakers ignore those points. Many pander to their law-and-order constituents by equating being against the death penalty with being soft on crime. One unfortunate result of this attitude was the passage in 1996 of federal laws restricting death-penalty appeals. Today, perhaps as a result of these restrictions, 12 other states among the 38 that have the death penalty on the books are considering moratoriums on executions.
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Gov. Ryan, who has said he remains a death-penalty supporter in some cases, took a compassionate and pragmatic step Monday. "I cannot," he said, "support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare: the state’s taking of innocent life." Other politicians need to show the same courage. Until all defendants in the U.S. have equal access to competent and quality legal representation, the executions must stop.