The Death of Death
York, Byron
The Death Death 44 have grave concerns about our state's shameful record of convicting innocent people and putting them on death row," a somber-looking Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan said...
...A look behind the press coverage suggests that recent events are the result of a brilliantly conceived campaign by a new breed of death penalty abolitionists...
...A decade ago, the brightest among them realized that their strategy of opposing the death penalty—a strategy that seemed to consist mostly of giving pro bono legal aid to defendants and holding candlelight vigils outside prisons—simply was not working...
...But that did not change their support for the death penalty...
...MacArthur runs the The American Spectator • April 2000 Chicago-based J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation, named after his father, who made a fortune selling commemorative plates in the 1970's...
...The execution went forward on schedule...
...its purpose is not to win cases but to shape press coverage of the death penalty...
...The Death of Death...
...The foundation is sometimes known as "Little Mac" to distinguish it from the far larger John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, named after Rick MacArthur's grandparents...
...Dieter is asked to imagine a convicted murderer whose case is painstakingly re-reviewed yet another time and whose guilt is confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt...
...Dionne added: "Those who favor capital punishment do so in the name of justice...
...the Illinois Supreme Court overturned the conviction after the infonnant's credibility came into question...
...Garza, who is indisputably guilty, had the bad luck to run afoul of federal "drug kingpin" laws that mandate the death penalty for certain crimes...
...recently Wisconsin Democratic Sen...
...The same is true on the national level...
...And now several other states, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Missouri, are considering similar measures...
...The fact that so many prisoners on death row have been exonerated, they say, makes it imperative that every single death row case in the United States —all 3,625 of them—be carefully re-examined...
...Porter, a black man with an IQ of 51, was convicted of gunning down two people in a Chicago park in 1982...
...There are already signs that such reasoning is having an effect on public opinion...
...But they also believe that there are some criminals—Andrew Kokoraleis comes to mind —who deserve society's final condemnation, even if it's expensive...
...The New York Times commended the governor for showing "courage and integrity...
...Much of that goes to Harper's magazine, which Rick MacArthur rescued from bankruptcy in 1980...
...The report was a joint effort between the Center and the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights, then chaired by Democrat Don Edwards of California...
...He was scheduled to die by lethal injection on March 17, 1999, and Governor Ryan, who even then had made statements sympathetic to the moratorium movement, denied his last appeal...
...And who is involved...
...The president was certainly concerned by the issues raised by the govemor of Illinois," spokesman Joe Lockhart said...
...As appealing as the idea of innocence was, the anti-death penalty movement had never had a case, a really white-hot, highly publicized case, that captured the public's imagination...
...So they came up with a new approach...
...But it's the traditional stuff of death penalty lawyering— mostly filing amicus briefs for condemned inmates and challenging verdicts on a case-by-case basis...
...Gallup's researchers found that an overwhelming number of Americans — 91 percent—acknowledge that innocent people have sometimes been sentenced to die...
...Why is it happening now...
...Judging by past experience, a substantial number of death row inmates are indeed innocent and there is a high risk that some of them will be executed," the report warned...
...Slowly, the Death Penalty Information Center began to attract some attention...
...Still, Dieter knows that the innocence strategy alone — especially in the absence of more clear-cut cases like Anthony Porter's—might not be enough to win the war on capital punishment...
...Moratorium Mania As the Illinois lawmaker predicted, moratorium advocates found their voices again in the months after the Kokoraleis execution...
...Several of the prisoners whose convictions had been overturned were, like Steve Manning, clearly bad guys who had committed serious crimes...
...And he tried slightly fresher topics, like a study of legal representation in capital cases and a look at alleged misconduct by prosecutors...
...Why is so much new attention being paid to the death penalty...
...He worked closely with a company called Fenton Communications, a public relations firm that has specialized in promoting sensational environmental causes (it orchestrated the Alar apple scare...
...Although a few anti-death penalty activists made pleas on Kokoraleis's behalf, many seemed to realize that a case like his was nothing but bad PR for moratorium supporters...
...But things didn't really look up until 1993, when the Center released a report titled "Innocence and the Death Penalty: Assessing the Danger of Mistaken Executions...
...A database search of news accounts of the Porter case reveals 8o stories that mention the Center — high-profile pieces in USA Today, the New York Times, CNN, Newsweek, and the Washington Post, among others...
...So far, it's been a smashing success...
...Over the years, the rest of Little Mac's largesse has gone to a variety ofleft-wing causes...
...Moratorium supporters got another boost in early February with the announcement of something called "The Justice Project," a group of former law enforcement officials who are organizing a new anti-death penalty campaign...
...How would the Death Penalty Information Center respond to such a case...
...But late last year the Supreme Court rejected final appeals in the case of Juan Raul Garza, a Texas drug smuggler who was convicted of murdering three men he thought were police informants...
...It was that decision which led to Manning's inclusion on the governor's list of thirteen innocent men who had narrowly escaped the death penalty...
...And then they ask: Can we really afford to spend all that money...
...But it soon suffered a setback over the case of another prisoner, a man named Andrew Kokoraleis...
...Definitely guilty...
...Little Mac," on the other hand, has a tiny fraction of those assets and gives away less than $5 million a year...
...And once that idea took hold, both sides might join together to support a moratorium on executions, which in turn might lead —someday— to the elimination of capital punishment altogether...
...Authorities freed and eventually pardoned Porter, making national headlines in the process...
...Wouldn't it make more sense just to get rid of capital punishment...
...Of course the great majority of those cases have already been thoroughly litigated—most have gone through appeal after appeal after appeal...
...It was a godsend for the anti-death penalty cause...
...That's not the issue...
...Enlarged photos of death-row defendants —props for several of his press conferences—line the walls...
...In late February, the Gallup polling organization found that Americans' support for the death penalty has dropped to its lowest level in nearly twenty years...
...It was less moralistic—no candles, please...
...The Death of Death Center could muster only 39 mentions in the press...
...Today, the foundation gives the magazine about $2 million annually, and MacArthur himself serves as president and publisher...
...Even at that, 66 percent of those surveyed remain in favor of capital punishment, while 28 percent oppose it...
...the list had grown to thirteen, meaning it exceeded the total of twelve convicts who had been put to death since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977...
...But the poll also contains some troubling news for the abolitionist movement...
...The case that tipped the balance for Ryan was that of Steven Manning, a former Chicago policeman who had been convicted of murdering the owner of a Des Plaines, Illinois trucking company in 199o...
...Dieter updated the report in 1997 with a new subtitle, "The Increasing Danger of Executing the Innocent...
...It was hard to consider a moratorium with that execution pending...
...All that is left is for the Clinton administration to set an execution date, which would mean Garza would be put to death within 6o days — a move that would no doubt bring on a chorus of criticism from death penalty opponents...
...in the 1980's it was fond of supporting Salvadoran guerrillas, Nicaraguan guerrillas, Palestinian guerrillas, the Nation magazine, and the Christie Institute...
...In addition, Manning is serving two life sentences plus boo years for the kidnap-for-ransom abduction of a Kansas City, Missouri nightclub owner...
...Big Mac" has assets of $4 billion and gives away about $170 million each year...
...Just two days before that, the Illinois Supreme Court ordered a stay while authorities investigated exculpatory evidence that had been gathered by a Northwestern University professor and anti-death penalty crusader named David Protess...
...Not only was the story an old one, it also suffered from an insurmountable handicap: In discussing alleged discrepancies in the treatment of black and white killers, Dieter could not escape the fact that all involved were still killers, which did little to elicit public sympathy...
...Innocence had the potential to succeed where racial, constitutional, and religious arguments had failed...
...Rick MacArthur saw that the way to reach people in this country in this day and age is through the media...
...In much the way that New Democrats, in the late 1980's and early 9o's, saw that their party's out-of-touch stands on issues like crime and welfare threatened to marginalize Democratic candidates, the new death penalty abolitionists saw that their soft-on-killers image virtually insured they would never persuade the large majority of Americans who approve of the death penalty to change their minds and support its elimination...
...The Illinois moratorium movement, already underway before Porter's case made the news, quickly picked up steam...
...Here was someone who was actually innocent—another man confessed to the crime—and his innocence appeared to be so obvious that even a group of student sleuths (and their private eye) could figure it out...
...MacArthur's real innovation—a turning point in anti-death penalty activism—came in 1990, when he created an organization called the Death Penalty Information Center, Unlike the Justice Center and other anti-death penalty advocacy groups, the Information Center bills itself as a non-partisan source of facts on capital punishment...
...In 1985 MacArthur founded the MacArthur Justice Center, which operates as a "public interest" law firm inside the University of Chicago Law School...
...But Dieter kept trying...
...It's not a typical anti-death penalty organization," says Richard Dieter, the mild-mannered lawyer and long-time activist who has run the Center for most of its history...
...There's a bit of euphoria here," Dieter explains, looking around...
...Manning, an organized crime associate, was sentenced to death after a prison informant fingered him in the killing...
...He was a sick, evil animal," one Illinois legislator told the Associated Press...
...Innocence has its own cachet," he says, "but you can't go to that well too many times...
...In 1992, after two years in business, the 21 De ath penalty ab olitionists could never get the public to support their cause—until they came up with a new way to sell their product...
...I cannot support a system," Ryan said, "which, in its administration, has proven so BYRON YORK is The American Spectator's senior writer...
...It was, to say the least, a debatable proposition...
...And it was designed to appeal to the public's sense of fairness without appearing squishy on violent crime...
...The foundation, whose motto is "Rebuilding the Lives of War Victims," appears to have nothing to do with the death penalty, except for the fact that it received $1.75 million from the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation in 1998, the last year for which figures are available...
...Andrew Kokoraleis was, in short, a living, breathing advertisement for the death penalty...
...Russ Feingold sent a letter to Bill Clinton asking for a moratorium on all federal executions...
...22 April 20190 • The American Spectator How could his case convince anyone to oppose the death penalty...
...So the abolitionists are refining their argument...
...Kokoraleis was part of a gang of killers known as "The Rippers" who, in the words of one Associated Press report, "kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered and mutilated as many as 18 Chicago-area women in 1981 and 1982...
...two of the first three reports were on the immensely familiar subject of racial disparities in capital punishment...
...Anthony and Andrew But there were still problems...
...It had the potential to unite the death penalty's strongest supporters with its strongest opponents—after all, who could accept the taking of innocent life...
...fraught with error and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of innocent life...
...If there are legitimate concerns that are brought to us, we will look at the concerns:' The issue might seem moot, given that the federal government has not executed anyone since 1963, when a man named Victor Feuger was hanged for murdering an Iowa doctor...
...The issue is how to make a safer society...
...Indeed, while the Center has proved that it can be quite adept in associating itself with cases like Anthony Porter's, it has also shown itself equally skilled in avoiding association with unpleasant stories like Kokoraleis's...
...And with that, a simple strategy began to emerge: Emphasize the word innocent...
...The Center's strategy was to try to bring attention to the issue by publishing news-making reports on the most controversial aspects of the death penalty...
...It was the culmination of years of legal trouble for Manning, who in the past been suspected but not charged in the mob-style hit of a felw gang member as well as the shot-four-times-in-the-head murder of his own father, from whose bank accounts Manning later withdrew $130,000...
...But the editorial acclaim, enthusiastic as it was, left a few basic questions unanswered...
...But some of those causes have now faded into history, replaced by another MacArthur passion: the death penalty...
...Of course they don't support executing the innocent...
...After all, who could accept the taking of an innocent life...
...Byron York A simple strategy began to emerge: Emphasize the word innocent...
...And it seems that each day there are more opponents...
...in fact, 6o percent said it is not imposed frequently enough...
...But his new angle —the growing danger of executing the wrongly accused—made some news...
...Although it works on a variety of lawsuits against gun manufacturers and law enforcement agencies, the most significant part of its work is devoted to capital punishment...
...That's not the issue...
...Certainly the Death Penalty Information Center and Fenton Communications didn't go out of their way to publicize the issue...
...After exhausting all his appeals, he was scheduled to be executed on September 23, 1998...
...The risk that innocent people will be caught in the web of the death penalty is rising," he wrote...
...Now that he's gone, it's easier to talk about it...
...At a fundamental level, many Americans support the death penalty because they believe it is just...
...The current emphasis on faster executions, less resources for defense, and an expansion in the number of death cases means that the execution of innocent people is inevitable...
...Dieter could point to no cases in which demonstrably innocent people had been executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976...
...Definitely guilty...
...It would be an understatement to say that Ryan's announcement was well received by public opinion leaders...
...The project is run by the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, the group best known for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for its campaign against land mines...
...Others were plainly guilty of murder, although sometimes not the one for which they had been sentenced to death...
...It relied on new ways of using the media...
...And that pretty much summed up the abolitionists' strategy when it came to the Kokoraleis case: Lay low and wait it out...
...The Chicago Tribune—which had published a crusading series of articles pointing out what it said were serious flaws in dozens of death row cases — called it "wise and welcome...
...Protess and one of his journalism classes—along with a private investigator hired to help with the project—had spent months examining the Porter case...
...the innocence issue is taking hold and the Center is appearing in more and more The American Spectator April 2000 news stories...
...They no more reject capital punishment because a mistake might be made than they reject incarceration because people have at times been wrongfully imprisoned...
...The Cachet of innocence Richard Dieter is sitting in his modest office at the Death Penalty Information Center's headquarters on the edge of Washington's Dupont Circle neighborhood...
...Then they point out that such a review would be an extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming process...
...Can there be any argument against insisting that it be imposed justly—and not on the wrong people...
...Well, maybe it took $2 million to get this guy to the point of execution, money that could be spent on forty more police officers on the street," Dieter explains...
...Better just to ignore it...
...Its start was not terribly auspicious...
...Capital Punishment Although the moratorium movement is the work of dozens of groups and individuals, none has been more important or influential than John R. "Rick" MacArthur...
...one asks...
...Because Manning was already imprisoned for the foreseeable future—and because the state Supreme Court had forbidden the use of some potentially important evidence—prosecutors decided not to try him again on the thrown-out murder conviction...
...Meeting with reporters on January 31, Ryan said he had been profoundly affected by the growing list of Illinois inmates who had been sentenced to death but were later exonerated...
...Once an execution occurs, the error is final...
...There's been very little success for a long time.', But now there are victories to celebrate...
...And Washington Post columnist E.J...
...A majority of Americans favor the ultimate punishment," Gallup wrote, "even while they are aware that innocent people are occasionally sentenced to die...
...And that, in the final reckoning, is an obstacle Richard Dieter and the abolitionists might never overcome...
...In some cases the gang— Kokoraleis, his brother Tommy, Edward Spreitzer and ringleader Robin Gecht— cannibalized their victims...
...George Ryan said as he announced a moratorium on all executions in his state...
...All that guilt made innocence a hard sell—until Anthony Porter came along...
...23 For some abolitionists, the crime doesn't matter...
...A search of stories about Kokoraleis reveals just four mentions of the Center...
...The issue is how to make a safer society...
...The courage of Ryan's decision," the paper continued, "lies in that, despite all the near-misses, the death penalty is still popular within his own Republican party...
...Little Mac vs...
...By the time the Steven Manning case came along, they had enough momentum to force Governor Ryan into action...
...The organization's purpose, according to its mission statement, is "to fight for human rights and social justice through litigation...
Vol. 33 • April 2000 • No. 3
