Ryan’s hope

He returned from service in Korea to marry his childhood sweetheart. He studied for his pharmacy degree at Ferris State College in Michigan and then worked in the family business for 30 years.
But the lifelong Republican, a father of six and grandfather to 14, has become a hero to people at home and abroad who are more familiar with picket lines than picket fences.
Ryan grabbed headlines worldwide when, days before his retirement as governor of Illinois in January 2003, he commuted the sentences of the 167 people on the state’s death row.
Since leaving office, he’s become a convinced abolitionist and has been leading a campaign for an international moratorium on capital punishment.
“I’ve come full circle, frankly,” said Ryan, who in his first year as governor rejected the final appeal of a man before he was executed.
Some admirers claim that the Illinois politician was a finalist last year for the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the pope and the eventual winner, Shirin Ebadi of Iran, although Ryan himself said there’s no way of knowing that, as the selection process is highly secretive.
This year’s speculation around a Nobel prize takes place against an extraordinary backdrop: Ryan was indicted last December on political corruption charges.
That twist came a little late for a documentary film that charts Ryan’s journey on the issue of capital punishment. “Deadline” was shown at the Sundance Film Festival earlier in the year and will be aired as a two-hour special on NBC on July 30.
Back in 1977, as a state representative, he voted for the reinstatement of the death penalty in Illinois.
“The day came when I had to make the choice about whether we were going to execute a person or not — a fellow by the name of Andrew Kokoraleis.
“It was unpleasant one and one that has gnawed at me since I went through that process. Although there was no doubt in my mind about his guilt,” Ryan said.
Shortly after Kokoraleis’s 1999 execution, the Illinois criminal justice system was rocked by another case. Journalism students at Northwestern University, with the help of their professor and a private investigator, uncovered evidence that led to the exoneration of Anthony Porter, who’d been on death row for 17 years. In January 2000, “to prevent another Anthony Porter,” Ryan declared a moratorium on executions until the system could be fixed.
Ultimately, with Northwestern’s School of Law involved in the campaign along with the journalism students, 13 death-row inmates were freed.
As Ryan’s term as governor drew to a close, there was speculation that he would commute the sentences of many death-row inmates to life imprisonment.
He promised families at a meeting that if he commuted the sentence of a loved one’s convicted killer, they would hear of it directly from him and not from the media.
In the end, he opted for a blanket commutation for the 167 inmates on death row.
“I decided it was the only safe thing I could do,” he said
He had letters hand delivered to each of the victims’ family members the morning he made the announcement.
Ryan also freed four men, making a total of 17 death-row inmates who’ve been exonerated in Illinois in recent years.
He got the most flak from his fellow Republicans. “But once they understood why I did what I did, based on the system, they said: ‘Look we support the death penalty. If we’re going to have it, we want it right. And what you did was the right thing to do,’ ” Ryan said.
A Rome-based anti-capital punishment group named Hands Off Cain contacted Ryan and he eventually became its honorary chairman. The organization campaigns for a worldwide moratorium on executions, seeing that as an important step to abolition.
For European campaigners, Ryan has become much more than a symbol; he’s proven an enormously energetic campaigner. “He spent a year lobbying in Europe,” said Marco Perduca, a New York-based member of Hands Off Cain’s board of directors. “He’s very powerful speaker; and he doesn’t use political jargon.”
For his part, Ryan pointed to the importance of the leadership of the Irish and Italian delegations at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Perduca explained that the European Union, recently enlarged to 25 countries, and the broader 45-nation Council of Europe, require that its members have no death-penalty statutes. These binding commitments have been a huge force for reform, he said, particularly in Turkey and in former nations of the Soviet Union that aspire to membership of those organizations.
However, Hands Off Cain focuses its attention on the United Nations General Assembly and the Geneva-based United Nations Human Rights Commission, even though resolutions passed by either body are not binding.
The group believes that a world moratorium would force many countries to declare one, leading to the ultimate removal of death-penalty statutes.
“African countries look to the United Nations,” Perduca said, adding that signs of reform are evident on that continent. “Ghana has not executed anyone in many years.”
China, Singapore, Iran, Laos, Vietnam and all the Arab countries are opposed to any UN statement against capital punishment. “But Singapore and Egypt are the most active opponents,” Perduca said.
“Most people aren’t aware of the uncivilized company we keep on this issue,” said Jennifer Linzer, assistant director of the Center of Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.
“Most Americans don’t think about the death penalty; when they do, it’s when they read about some horrible crime. They still think that people are executed in England, Ireland and other European countries,” she said.
Ryan, Linzer said, is a strong voice for change because of his unique experience: he’s an abolitionist who once allowed an execution to go ahead. And the fact that he’s was so long a Republican elected official wins a lot of attention, particularly overseas.
She said that many in Illinois feel that the corruption charges are politically motivated. “It’s a very thin indictment,” she contended, pointing out that it relates to his time as Illinois’ secretary of state.
Many in the Bush administration were not happy with the blanket commutations, nor with the fact that he was the first governor in 40 years to visit Cuba, Linzer argued.
She said that many Illinois Republicans, among them former Gov. Jim Thompson, have declared their full support for Ryan. She added that the legal fees alone make it a very difficult time for him, his wife and his family. (Ryan told the Echo that he had no comment to make on what was an ongoing case.)
“He’s a Republican of the old school; it doesn’t matter what your label is, it’s about getting things done,” Linzer said.
“He’s down to earth, very disarming; he can communicate with anyone at any level. He’s a bridge builder.”
Ryan has built some intriguing alliances in his death-penalty crusade.
The general secretary of Hands off Cain, Sergio D’Elia, spent 12 years in prison in connection with the activities of the ultra-leftist Prima Linea (Front Line), an urban guerrilla group that was active in Italy in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Many former Italian terrorists of the right and the left denounced their former extremism and embraced the rule of law. Some, like D’Elia, threw themselves into campaigning for social justice using peaceful means.
Ryan said that he’s focused entirely on the death penalty and has never discussed the past lives of members of Hands Off Cain, but added: “I’m a convert too.”
As for religion, that has played a role, insofar as it’s one part of a person’s moral formation.
Ryan, who attends church regularly, was raised in the Methodism of his German-American mother. “People always think I’m a Catholic because I’ve six children,” he said laughing. “My father was a Catholic.”
The ex-governor’s great-grandfather came from Tipperary. “My grandfather worked with the railway in Wisconsin and moved to Iowa,” he said. Ryan’s mother and father were both raised in Maquoketa.
“Religion plays a part in your life if you’re raised in the right kind of way,” he said.
He was cautious about linking political decision-making too closely with religious belief. Although he’s given sermons in churches on the issue, his arguments on the death penalty are usually couched in general terms.
“Once you study how abusive, how racist, how arbitrary, how capricious the system is, I don’t see how anybody can say it ought to be part of our system,” he said.
The day before Ryan’s interview with the Echo, another a convicted rapist and kidnapper was declared innocent in Illinois.
“He spent 10 years in jail, and they turned him lose,” he said.
The man wasn’t on death row, Ryan said, but it was yet more evidence of how flawed and broken the system is.
(“Deadline,” a Big Mouth Productions film, directed and written by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, will be shown on NBC as two-hour special broadcast on July 30.)