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| UPDATE: DEATH PENALTY | |
 May 10, 2001  |
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Last year, Illinois governor George Ryan imposed a moratorium on state executions. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW-Chicago, updates the states changing attitude towards the death penalty.
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The names on the signs were either a person on Death Row in Illinois or an Illinois murder victim. Fourteen faith-based organizations had called the rally and prayer service to ask that none of the 164 people on Death Row ever face the ultimate punishment for their crime. CALVIN MORRIS, Community Renewal Society: Vengeance belongs to God, not to man, and we recognize because there are injustices in the justice system where poor people and weak people are often condemned to die while the rich and the powerful who have the ability to have lawyers and good defense are not killed. |
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| A debate with new intensity | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: As the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh nears, the debate over capital punishment in Illinois has taken on a new intensity. Anti-death penalty activist and author of the book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean, has crisscrossed the country, pleading for an end to the death penalty, even for crimes as odious as those committed by Timothy McVeigh.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: While in Illinois, Sister Prejean praised the actions of Illinois Governor George Ryan, who, last year, declared a moratorium against executions in the state. GOVERNOR GEORGE RYAN: I now favor a moratorium because I have grave concerns about our state's shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on Death Row. I can't support a system which, in its administration, has proven to be so fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life. |
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| Thirteen innocent people on Death Row | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Republican governor, once a strong supporter of the death penalty, imposed the moratorium after the release of 13 wrongfully convicted men from Illinois' Death Row-- men like Gary Gauger, exonerated after the real killers of his parents were convicted, a crime that had originally sent him to Death Row. GARY GAUGER: I was prepared to die. If they were going to take absurdity to its conclusion, there was nothing I could do about it. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Another was Ronald Jones. After eight years on Death Row, new DNA evidence proved he could not have committed the crime that put him there. RONALD JONES: As far as a moratorium is concerned, I got to be kind of upbeat about that because there's guys that are still on Death Row had... If it hadn't been for this moratorium, I know at least four of them would probably be executed by now. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But it was the case of this man, Anthony Porter that had the biggest impact on the Governor. Porter was released after a group of graduate journalism students found new evidence that proved his innocence. The students and their professor celebrated his release.
DEMONSTRATORS: We'll walk hand in hand today... ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The Governor's action heartened Illinois activists who had been working for a moratorium for years. They see the moratorium as the first step to the abolition of the death penalty. Jane Bohman heads the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project. JANE BOHMAN: I was thrilled, and very, very respectful of Governor Ryan's moral courage. Moral courage is an intangible thing, and it doesn't happen very often in our modern political life. A lot of things are spun and calculated, and I just felt tremendous respect for his ability to see himself as a moral actor as well as a politician, and reject his role as the last person to sign off on an execution when he was not sure that the person was guilty. |
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| Political fallout | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ELIZABETH BRACKETT: But most of the Governors' fellow Republicans like State Senator Ed Petka, were angry about the moratorium. Petka, a former prosecutor and member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he probably won't support the Governor again because of his stance on the death penalty.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Governor Ryan may be taking political heat in Illinois, but Sister Prejean says the impact of the Illinois moratorium has been felt around the country. SISTER HELEN PREJEAN: When Governor George Ryan stood up and said, "look, I'm for the death penalty in principle, but not like this," he moved it onto a ground where people can be morally decent and fair-minded and not look like they're relinquishing their principles, like they flip- flopped on an issue. "I used to be for the death penalty and now I'm against it." And I think he carved away. I was with a Governor in New Mexico, Governor Gary Johnson, just a few weeks ago, and here's a guy, the same thing. He looked at me straight in the eye and said, "Sister, I'm an eye-for-an-eye man." Then he went, "not like this." So I think when Governor George Ryan stood up, I just think he did it out of decency. And great irony to me, you have a conservative Republican guy showing the moral leadership to the country. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Though 19 other states are considering legislation around a moratorium or abolition, no other states have imposed the moratorium since the Illinois' decision. But proponents and opponents say the McVeigh case slowed the momentum that was building toward moratoriums. A recent CNN/U.S.A. Today Gallup poll found that of the 38 percent of Americans that oppose the death penalty, more than half thought that Timothy McVeigh should be executed. The Governor says he's agonized about the McVeigh case along with the rest of the country.
ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The McVeigh case has only strengthened Senator Petka's belief in capital punishment. |
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| Seeking both fairness and justice | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ED PETKA: I would not want to live in a society where individuals would wantonly kill, especially in mass numbers, and not have the government have the opportunity to consider the imposition of the death penalty. I don't know what the measured response would be to a person, for example, like Tim McVeigh, who murdered 168 people he had never seen before and for all intents and purposes had never done him anything wrong. The only measured, proportional response to it is to make that person face the ultimate punishment. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: After the Governor declared the moratorium, he established a blue-ribbon commission to review the death penalty. In April, the Governor told a Loyola University Law School class what he hoped from the Commission. GOVERNOR GEORGE RYAN: It's fairness and justice that concern me, and it's clear the system of capital punishment in Illinois has failed on both counts. Perhaps you'll enter the private sector and join the defense bar. If you do, I hope you'll take time to provide defense to someone who might not be able to afford you-- a little pro bono work. They may be in a fight for their life. They may need you. ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The activists are hoping the Commission will recommend the abolition of the death penalty. But even if it did, it will take action by the Illinois general assembly to halt the death penalty, and right now, even the Governor admits the votes aren't there to end capital punishment in Illinois. |
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DEMONSTRATORS:
Stop the violence! Stop the killing! 
SISTER
HELEN PREJEAN, Author/Activist: For sure, if you're looking for a poster
boy for the death penalty, Tim McVeigh -- but if you ever visit the
memorial that's at Oklahoma City for the bombing victims, they chose
a structure of 168 empty chairs, and even after they kill Timothy McVeigh-which
they want - he wants them to do it-- those 168 chairs are still going
to be empty, and what will we have solved? 
GOVERNOR
GEORGE RYAN, Illinois: We don't want to kill innocent people and we
almost did in Illinois, and that's what brought me where I am today,
that we had to put a stop to it, because we were this close to killing
innocent people, not once, not twice, but 13 times in Illinois. Anthony
Porter was two days away, ordered his last meal, fitted for his suit
and his coffin, and two days away from execution, we almost executed
him. It would have horrendous had we done that. 
ED
PETKA: Well, I'm disappointed. I mean, I asked the question directly
of the Governor, did he had it in him to sign a death warrant? I've
tried cases of an individual who was convicted of five murders here
in Will County, and did five others that we proved but did not prosecute.
That individual, who had been released from prison for a very serious,
heinous crime, deserves the death penalty, and because of this moratorium,
he's going to be living behind bars on taxpayer dollars, and he doesn't
deserve another day on the planet. 
GOVERNOR
GEORGE RYAN: Well, it's just kept me thinking, frankly, like everybody
else, I suppose, that's gone through what I've gone through as a heavy,
strong supporter of the death penalty, that people have now started
to sway a little bit. But I still think that there's an occasion when
the death penalty is appropriate. This is probably one of those cases.