ILLINOIS AND MARYLAND SET THE STAGE

Mica Root, National Program Intern, Philadelphia, PA

Photo: AFSC

Governor Ryan (center), applauded for instating the country's first statewide moratorium at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's annual conference in October 2000 in San Francisco. Mike Farrell (left), Hugo Bedeau (right)

On January 10, 2003, Governor George Ryan of Illinois pardoned four death row prisoners; that day, Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Leroy Orange, and Stanley Howard left death row alive. The next day, Ryan commuted the sentences of each of the other 163 people on Illinois' death row, most to life in prison.

When Ryan, a Republican, came to the governor's office in 1999, he believed the death penalty a necessary institution. But in 2000, troubled by the fact that Illinois had exonerated more death row prisoners than it had executed, he issued a moratorium on executions and commissioned a study of his state's death penalty. The group that carried out the study, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, came up with 85 recommendations that would help to prevent the execution of innocent people. These included videotaping police interrogations of homicide suspects, creating a state panel to review prosecutors' choices to pursue the death penalty, and requiring that defense attorneys who try capital cases be better trained to do so. The Illinois Legislature enacted none of them.

In a speech at the Northwestern University School of Law on January 11, 2003, Governor Ryan said,

"The death penalty has been abolished in 12 states. In none of these states has the homicide rate increased. In Illinois last year we had about 1000 murders; only 2% of that 1000 were sentenced to death. Where is the fairness and equality in that? The death penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly because of the absence of standards for the 102 Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sentence. Should geography be a factor in determining who gets the death sentence? I don't think so, but in Illinois it makes a difference. You are five times more likely to get a death sentence for first degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook County. Where is the justice and fairness in that?"

Ryan's concerns echoed the findings in a Maryland study, commissioned by outgoing Governor Parris Glendening, which was released on January 7 of this year. Researchers at the University of Maryland found that geography plays a significant role in determining who gets the death penalty, as prosecutors in different districts seek the death penalty at very different rates. They also found evidence of racial bias in prosecutors' decisions about which cases merited seeking the death penalty. Furthermore, the researchers determined that someone who is convicted of killing a white person is much more likely to face capital punishment than someone who is convicted of killing a person of color. Someone who is Black and accused of a crime with a white victim is the most likely of all to end up on death row. Seventy-five percent of Mary-land's death row is African American (compared to 28 percent of Maryland's population); everyone in that 75 percent, along with everyone in the other 25 percent, was convicted in a case in which the victim was white.

Governor Glendening declared a death penalty moratorium in 2002, based on preliminary findings from the study. Despite the study's conclusions, Maryland's new governor, Robert Ehrlich, lifted the moratorium in his second week in office.

As Governor Ryan said, "Many people express the desire to have capital punishment. Few, however, seem prepared to address the tough questions that arise when the system fails." Ryan himself was one of those few, and his conviction and courage sparked new debates on the terrible flaws of the U.S. criminal justice system all around the country. Let us hope that his actions embolden other legislators to examine the death penalty-and to declare moratoriums while they do so, that no one else be executed because of his race or location.

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