Chicago Sun Times: Gov. Ryan empties Death Row of all 167: Gov. Ryan ignited national and even international debate Saturday by taking all 167 prisoners off Illinois' Death Row, blowing away the modern record of eight commutations set by former Ohio Gov. Richard Celeste.
The Sun Times approach, for some reason, was to combine the article of what was done along with articles about the reaction of various families concerned, attach the full text of the governor's hour-long speech to the bottom, and then combine it into One Long Page.
On the other hand, while the Chicago Tribune's approach, using separate articles and pages, provides somewhat more comprehensive analysis, for some reason, they didn't include the full text of the governor's speech.
Interestingly, for all that the governor's decision affects directly only the people of this one state, it did actually make international news.
Especially peculiar are the comments from the director of Amnesty International USA, who says, "Governor Ryan has set an important precedent for elected officials who question the fairness of the death penalty but fear political repercussions." And that precedent would be: when you are at the end of your political career, dogged by scandals that will almost certainly result in a federal indictment against you for corruption within the next six months and which in fact provided the end to your career, then you can do whatever the hell you want, leaving the people who succeed you to reap the whirlwind that you have sown.
Understand: I do not disagree with the governor's decision, but people are making it out to be far more than it is. They speak of how it will provide an example, yet the incoming governor of Maryland campaigned explicitly on a pledge to overturn the death penalty moratorium then in effect -- and that promise is not likely to change despite the fact that a recent study showed both geographical and racial bias in the selection and administration of the death penalty in that state. Texas, Oklahoma, and Virginia, which account for the vast majority of executions in this country over the past few years, and which currently have far fewer protections in place than Illinois ever had, are unlikely to examine what they do and how they do it. A federal government which recently explicitly selected a state to try a capital murder case because it was the affected jurisdiction in which a juvenile was most likely to be put to death is unlikely to have anything approaching a second thought about the death penalty. Even the incoming governor of Illinois is upset, because he feels that there should be no such thing as a blanket commutation ... but he plans to continue the death penalty moratorium and would not have signed death warrants for anyone who had remained on death row and he will not sign warrants for those who will be newly sentenced to death row.
So while this is locally important ... that is all that it is. No more, no less.
Posted by iain at January 12, 2003 05:23 PMComments
