Et cetera: Illinois justice
ET CETERA Illinois justice Before leaving office earlier this month, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 men on death row and pardoned outright four others, thus placing in...
...Senator Joseph Lieber-man (D-Conn...
...Prosecutors and victims' groups were outraged, and few politicians seemed eager to follow in Ryan's footsteps...
...It was obviously not a case-by-case review, and that's what our system is all about...
...As the novelist Scott Turow, a former Illinois prosecutor and death-penalty advocate, has recently written, "Perhaps the best argument against capital punishment may be that it is an issue beyond the limited capacity of government to get things right...
...Critics of the death penalty, especially in Illinois, might fairly point out that "terrible damage to the credibility of our system of justice" had already been done by a series of revelations about forced confessions, lying informers, and innocent men sentenced to death...
...a declared candidate for president, called the governor's action "shockingly wrong...
...Most Americans support the death penalty for particularly heinous crimes, and most legislators are chary of challenging those views...
...Clearly, something is very wrong with the state's justice system...
...What is increasingly hard for fair-minded people to disagree about is the unreliability of the judicial system...
...Ryan was widely praised by death-penalty opponents in the United States and abroad...
...When it comes to life and death, there should be no margin for error.ror...
...Ryan, a former death-penalty supporter, was convinced that an innocent person would soon be killed by the state...
...It is not clear, however, whether Ryan's dramatic action will help or retard the effort to abolish capital punishment...
...In recent years, seventeen men awaiting execution in Illinois have been proven to be innocent...
...Too much is at stake, for the community and the accused, for anyone to remain complacent...
...Too many mistakes have been brought to light, in Illinois and elsewhere, for death-penalty advocates to remain sanguine...
...Reasonable people can disagree about the justice of capital punishment, and unilateral judicial or executive steps to abolish it are likely to arouse resentment...
...ET CETERA Illinois justice Before leaving office earlier this month, Illinois Governor George Ryan commuted the sentences of 167 men on death row and pardoned outright four others, thus placing in limbo, at least temporarily, the state's death penalty...
...It did terrible damage to the credibility of our system of justice, and particularly for victims...
Vol. 130 • January 2003 • No. 2
