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For years, I dodged the death penalty.
I looked at America's mass incarceration
figures, climbing rapidly to the 2 million mark -- far past
the rate of any other advanced nation. And I decided excessive
imprisonment, as it tears apart families and communities,
is a far greater threat to our society than relatively small
numbers of executions occurring across the country.
So in these columns I focused on alternative
punishment forms, the potentials of rehabilitation, and the
broad benefits of treatment -- rather than imprisonment -
for minor drug offenders.
Maybe I dodged a judgment on the death penalty
because so clearly there were two sides -- the distastefulness
of state-imposed killings versus crimes so heinous (Timothy
McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma
City, for example) that no punishment seemed too harsh.
Now it's time to decide. And George Ryan
has done it for me. I believe Ryan's personal journey, from
a vote for Illinois' death penalty as a legislator in 1977
to his deepening doubts and dramatic pardons and commutations
on the eve of leaving the governorship, represent a conclusive
signal that America needs to renounce capital punishment.
My Illinois friends tell me that Ryan was a politico who for
years opposed progressive causes and rarely scored high on
ethics. The current corruption case, chasing him as he's left
office, is hardly a positive character reference.
But history doesn't necessarily select saints
to move us forward. And there's little doubt that Ryan was
moved to action by hard research and harsh facts. Instead
of brushing them off, he took seriously articles in the Chicago
Tribune and exhaustive research by Northwestern University
students and faculty proving that several of Illinois' death
row inmates had been wrongly convicted by virtue of coerced
confessions, poor quality counsel, or inadequate investigations.
While Illinois had executed 12 men since
1977, it had been obliged to free 13 from death row when their
innocence was established. Nationally, over 100 death row
inmates have been exonerated and freed. Who can reasonably
doubt that some innocent men have been executed -- in fact,
murdered -- by our states?
Ryan issued a moratorium on executions in
January 2000. He appointed a state commission that conducted
the most intensive review of capital punishment ever recorded.
The commission's findings were astounding.
Depending on pure whim of prosecutors, some defendants were
selected for the death penalty, others not. People accused
of killing black defendants were 60 percent less likely to
be sentenced to death than those accused of killing whites.
And if you committed a murder in Chicago, you were 84 percent
less likely to receive the death penalty than if you lived
in a rural area.
In the wake of Ryan's startling commutation
to life imprisonment for 167 death row inmates, the news media
have aired the outrage and anger from the families and friends
of the victims of the convicted rapists, attackers and murderers.
The common theme: Ryan had stolen their right to the "closure"
an execution would bring.
But we have to ask: Should the state assure
aggrieved people the satisfaction of such "closure"
if the price is continuing a system that almost certainly
executes some innocent persons?
Studies indicate the failures of Illinois'
death penalty are shared by many states across the U.S. In
Ryan's own words: "The system has proved itself to be
wildly inaccurate, unjust and unable to separate the innocent
from the guilty and, at times, a very racist system.... If
we haven't got a (death penalty) system that works, we shouldn't
have a system."
Contrast that, if you will, with the statement
of Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine. Devine called
Ryan's commutations "outrageous and unconscionable,"
asserting they "breach faith with the memory of the dead."
To which one might reply: Should we then
conclude there's not justice in states which have chosen not
to have the death penalty, just life imprisonment? Can't we
have justice without bloodlust?
And if the object is to defend the public
safety -- stop ghastly crimes before they occur -- does a
death penalty deter? There's no evidence prove it.
We do know the death penalty is fading across the United States.
Except in Texas and a few Southern states, it's now rarely
imposed. Internationally, there's a wave of revulsion against
executions -- among the few nations that still perform them
are Iraq, Iran and North Korea (didn't someone call them an
"axis of evil")?
So the time to expunge life penalties from
our statute books is clearly at hand.
Concurrently, we need to review the quality
of our trial and sentencing system in general. Marc Mauer
of the Sentencing Project notes that if just 2 percent of
the inmates now in state and federal prisons are actually
innocent, that means 28,000 guiltless people are now sitting
behind bars.
We could -- and need -- to do a lot better.
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