The granting of clemency to all death row inmates in Illinois today is an issue we feel strongly about. We have been a strong advocate of blanket clemency through our work with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. We team-teach the Wrongful Convictions class at Denver University's College of Law. And we have been writing about the issue for the past several years.

Tonight , we'll be expressing our support for Governor Ryan's decision in a live debate around 10:15 pm EST on Rita Cosby's Foxwire on the Fox News Channel. Hope you can watch.

Except for lewd comments or nasty personal attacks, feel free to use the comments section to express your opinion about Governor Ryan's decision.

JANUARY 11, 2003 -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Life without can be worse than painless death
Illinois commutations can benefit even victims,
lead to better U.S. international relations

Washington, D.C.--In response to today's commutation by Illinois Gov. George Ryan (who received NACDL's Champion of Justice award and addressed the luncheon at NACDL's Fall Meeting in Chicago this past November) of the remaining 156 death sentences in that state to life without, Lawrence Goldman, president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, issued the following statement:

"While we understand that this is a time of anguish for many members of the families of victims of these inmates, we hope they will find solace in not being asked to be involved in at attempt to kill again to show that killing is wrong. We also hope they benefit from not having to deal with the ongoing legal battles, and ultimately an execution, which would have forced them to relive painful memories. Perhaps they will also get some satisfaction from knowing that those inmates who are guilty must live, largely alone and under horrible conditions, in contemplation of their own crimes.

"We also hope that as Americans consider this momentous action, we can soon reach the same conclusion that most of the rest of the advanced world has reached: that even if we could be sure that the death penalty deters, even though studies say it does not; that even if the vengeance of the death penalty somehow satisfies many victims and officials alike; and that even if death truly were a more fitting punishment than life in a cage, the cost of the death penalty to our humanity and the risks of error in a system incapable of perfection and fairness are just too great. Such an appreciation of life can only help us if we truly wish to achieve peace in a troubled world.

"Finally, to Gov. Ryan and all the NACDL members and others who worked to make this day a reality, we simply say, 'Thank you.'"

Goldman is a criminal defense lawyer in New York City. He can be reached at (917)816-4635.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) is the preeminent organization in the United States advancing the mission of the nation’s criminal defense lawyers to ensure justice and due process for persons accused of crime or wrongdoing. A professional bar association founded in 1958, NACDL’s more than 10,000 direct members — and 80-plus state and local affiliate organizations with another 28,000 members — include private criminal defense lawyers, public defenders, active-duty militarydefense counsel, law professors and judges committed to preserving fairness within America’s criminal justice system.

For more information:
Daniel Dodson
Director of Public Affairs
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
(202)872-8600 ext. 228
cell (202)486-5513
dodson@nacdl.org
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The Nobel Peace Prize For Governor George H. Ryan of Illinois

Illinois Governor George Ryan

Thank you.

It's official, from the spokesman of outgoing Illinois Governor Geoge Ryan: In a few minutes, at a press conference at Northwestern University Law School, home to the Center on Wrongful Convictions, Governor Ryan will grant clemency to all 156 death row inmates. This means the death sentences previously imposed on almost all of the inmates will automatically become life sentences, with no possibility of parole.

CNN and probably the other cable news networks will cover the press conference live. Please watch. It's important for the public to understand why this is not only the correct decision, but the only fair and just decision in a state where the death penalty system has broken down and so many innocent people have been wrongfully convicted.

"Ryan, who leaves office Monday, sent overnight letters to the families of murder victims warning them he would announce during a speech Saturday afternoon that he was commuting most of the death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of."

"What does it take? Now that we can say the number of wrongfully convicted men is 17, will that be enough?" Ryan asked.

We just saw a lengthy interview on CNN with pardoned death row inmate Leroy Orange, age 52, who has served 19 years . He was tortured into confessing by the Chicago police, who used tactics which included electric shock treatment. He is a soft-spoken man, and quite articulate. When asked whether there are other innocent men on death row, he replied "yes." When asked if there are guilty men on death row, he said "yes." In reply to the obvious next question, why grant blanket clemency to all, including the guilty, Orange gave the correct answer, essentially, because we don't know who is innocent and who is guilty.

Governor George Ryan is a courageous hero. Saving the life of an innocent man is far more profound an act of justice than any act of bribery or political misconduct in office can be considered an act of injustice. We don't care what happened with taxes and driver's licenses in Illinois. We care about saving the lives of these innocent and wrongfully convicted men.

It is better than 100 guilty men go free than for one innocent man to be put to death. In 1895, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision in the case Coffin v. United States, traced this principle past England, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, to Deuteronomy.

Here, no guilty person is going free. A few sentences will be shortened as is appropriate in those cases. The remaining sentences except for those four pardoned yesterday, are being commuted to life in prison, without. This is fair and this is just.

We purposefully wrote our last post of 2002 on this issue and the 428 legal scholars who wrote Governor Ryan to advise him that granting blanket clemency is legally supportable by precedent and valid.

Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, put it this way: "Isn't it better that we let 10 absolutely guilty men who committed horrible crimes spend the rest of their lives in prison, rather than risk one, a single execution of an innocent person?"

We are going to watch the conference live and will report back later. Please make a few minutes to stop by The Innocent Project, The Death Penalty Infomation Center and Stop Capital Punishment.Org and familiarize yourelves with the facts before criticizing Governor Ryan's noble action. To read our past posts on this issue, click on our " Death Penalty", " Innocence Cases" and " Inmates and Prisons" archives.

Here is a timeline of Governor Ryan's efforts to reform the death penalty system in Illinois.

Here are the guidelines for executive clemency in Illinois.

[comments now closed]

Illinois Governor George Ryan has granted pardons to four inmates on death row. He said ''a manifest injustice'' had occurred when they were apparently tortured into confessing by Chicago police.

He is also expected on Saturday to commute many of the state's remaining 150 death sentences to life in prison."

Update: Ryan's press conference Saturday on who will get clemency (meaning their death sentences will be converted to life sentences without) will be at 1:00 pm at Northwestern University.

Also, don't miss reading Crime, False Confessions and Videotapes, an editorial in today's New York Times.

According to the Innocence Project at the Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, 23 percent of the people who are exonerated after conviction turn out to have falsely confessed to the crime. Many of those confessions were taped and played as compelling evidence to a jury. As the jogger case and other reversals demonstrate, innocent people can be led into confessions. Their questioners — wittingly or not — also often provide them with details that would seem to be known only to the real criminal....

Beyond the injustice of punishing the wrong people, false admissions of guilt allow the real culprits to remain free to commit more crimes, as did Matias Reyes, who raped four other women, killing one of them, after he attacked the jogger in Central Park....

By videotaping every minute of interrogations, the police would help protect themselves against charges of coercion, improve the integrity of confessions and plug a gaping hole in the system.

Only Alaska and Minnesota now require videotaping of interrogations. Bill Perkins, a city council member in New York, has introduced a bill to require it.
If you are in New York, get on the horn (or the internet or to a fax machine) and support it.

Deathwork: Defending the Condemned by Michael Mello

Buy the Book Today!

"Legal cases are stories, and some of the most compelling -- and the most disturbing -- are those that take place on death row: the innocent man executed, juveniles and the mentally ill condemned to die, a smoking electric chair, a napping defense attorney, a senile hit man."

"These are the stories in which Michael Mello, as a capital public defender, played a crucial role, and they are the cases that make up Deathwork, a moment-by-moment, behind-the-scenes look at the life and work of a death row lawyer and his clients."

"Part memoir, part legal casebook, Deathwork offers a gritty, often anguishing picture of what Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called the American legal "machinery of death." The stories Mello tells raise questions about legal issues-from prosecutorial misconduct to the racial inequities of sentencing, from the rules of evidence to the rights of the mentally ill -- that here take on a life-and-death urgency. They describe in detail how constitutional issues are raised postconviction, and how those issues are adjudicated by the courts and in accordance with bizarre claims of objectivity."

"And they show, with a painful immediacy and authenticity, what it is like to live and work under an impending death sentence, the adrenaline rush of the stay or unexpected success, the inconsolable sadness upon the execution of the sick, the afflicted, the innocent."

The paperback is $13.97, compared with $54.95 for the hard cover. And Amazon only has five paperbacks left. Need we say more?

Mexico filed suit Thursday against the US in the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the U.S.’s failure to comply with the Vienna Convention’s guarantee of allowing foreign nationals access to consular officials prior to interrogation. Mexico is also seeking provisional measures, essentially a temporary restraining order, against all capital prosecutions in the US against Mexican nationals until the case is resolved.

The Court has tentatively scheduled a hearing for January 20th to consider Mexico's request for provisional measures.

Mexico issued a press release about this today, in Spanish, we're looking for an English copy.

According to ABC News, seven "volunteer" executions in 2002, where death-row prisoners relinquished their remaining appeals and opted to be put to death.

"More death-row inmates have been volunteering for their executions: Between 1993 and 2002, 75 volunteered for death, compared to the 22 consensual executions between 1977 and 1992.... Some critics argue that this shows that, contrary to popular belief, death is not the ultimate punishment for prisoners. "One could argue that life in prison is the worst kind of punishment and not the death penalty," said Richard Dieter, DPIC's executive director. "So many people wouldn't be volunteering for it if it was so bad."

This was in our email box today:

"Gov. George Ryan is expected to make a major announcement about the death penalty Friday, but it is not clear whether that announcement will include his decision on commuting the sentences of every man and woman on death row. Ryan is scheduled to speak at DePaul University, Chicago. The governor, who leaves office Monday, is contemplating reducing the sentences of more than 150 people."

Meanwhile, the website that was set up to support Gov. Ryan's nomination for the Nobel Prize has registered over 1,100 visitors since Dec. 24.

We saw red when we read the USA article about those misguided professors who erroneously describe the cases of known wrongfuly convicted people and then make, what are to us, spurious arguments against the death penalty. We certainly have no intention of linking to the article. But we will link to Kevin over at Calpundit who so effectively rebuts it:

The death penalty has always been a curiosity to me. I don't really have a philosophical objection to it, but let's face it: the risk of killing innocent people is a really big practical objection. If you imprison someone and later find he's innocent, at least you can free him and make restitution. You can't do that after you've executed someone. But the real curiosity is this: why are there so many people who are passionate about keeping the death penalty? What's the emotional appeal? A life sentence without possibility of keeps murderers off the street just as effectively, but death penalty advocates are dead set against accepting this as a substitute. Even the risk of killing the occasional innocent person doesn't keep them from demanding an eye for an eye.

To which we can only add: An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi

Pete Karas of the Progressive Racine Blog sends us the good news that Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, who introduced 11 bills in Congress on its first day yesterday, plans to introduce these two pieces of legislation in the next few weeks: Federal Death Penalty Act which would abolish the federal death penalty, and the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act, which
would place a moratorium on executions by the federal government and encourage the states to do the same while a national blue ribbon commission reviews the fairness of the administration of the death penalty.

A new death penalty study finds that in Maryland, blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death if their victims are white. The study was commissioned in 2000 by outgoing Governor Parris Glendening. "Criminologist Ray Paternoster found that the race of the defendant was not significant in death penalty-eligible cases, but wrote that the race of the victim proved a major factor in determining whether prosecutors sought the death penalty."

From the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty ( NCADP):

The study, conducted by the University of Maryland criminologist Ray Pateroster, found that black offenders who kill white victims are most likely to receive the death penalty. Of the 12 people currently on Maryland's death row, eight are black and four are white, and every person on death row was convicted in connection with the murder of a white victim. This is despite the fact that in recent years, about 80 percent of homicides in the state of Maryland involve black victims.
"Race plays a key role in who is sentenced to death across the United States in general and in Maryland in particular," said Steven W. Hawkins, NCADP executive director. "Our criminal justice system is supposed to be colorblind, but as this study shows, it is the exact opposite. Somehow, our system seems
to value the lives of white victims more than it does black victims."

The study also found tremendous geographic bias in how prosecutors seek the death penalty. About three-fourths of the people on Maryland's death row were prosecuted in Baltimore County, a largely suburban area that surrounds the city of Baltimore. Yet Baltimore County accounts for only 7 percent of Maryland's homicides. Prosecutors in most Maryland counties do not even seek death sentences, perhaps over concerns over cost and perhaps over concerns about
prevailing community sentiment.

"We know that geographic bias plays a role in the death penalty nationwide," Hawkins said. "In 2002, for example, only 13 states carried out executions -- a modern day low. This geographic bias seems even more pronounced in Maryland, where people prosecuted in Baltimore County are many times more likely to face a possible death sentence than people prosecuted in Montgomery or Prince George's County, or in the city of Baltimore."

Let's hope this bodes well for Maryland retaining its moratorium on the death penalty.

Update: The 79 page Executive Summary of the report is here. An e-mail from the Justice Project advises that "the report will be used to call for the state's General Assembly to pass a legislative moratorium on the death penalty. Gov.-elect Ehrlich has stated previous to the report's release he will terminate the moratorium upon his upcoming inauguration."

Here is the University of Maryland's press release on the study.