A Talk With Governor George Ryan (Page 2)

Within three months, two more Illinois death-row inmates were exonerated: one by DNA evidence, the other when a jailhouse informant's testimony was discredited. The state judiciary began its own investigation, and the calls for a moratorium grew. Still, "I was resisting." But one day "the attorney general called seeking a new execution date for an inmate. In my heart at that moment, I couldn't go forward with it." Political cynics wondered if Ryan shifted his position to deflect attention from charges of corruption against his Secretary of State, but Ryan's description of his internal turmoil is compelling. "I knew I couldn't make myself live through what I'd experienced with Kokoraleis," he says. "I just couldn't do it again."

In the fall of 1999 the Chicago Tribune published an examination of every Illinois death-row case since 1977, revealing, among other things, that more than one-third of all 285 Illinois capital convictions over that period had been reversed because of "fundamental error." It was the final straw. Last January Ryan acted, unilaterally issuing his moratorium. He also assembled a commission, including such notable death-penalty opponents as Scott Turow and former Senator Paul Simon, to report on the roots of Illinois's false-conviction record. Ryan's moratorium--combined with relentless reporting by the Tribune--has had a seismic impact on Illinois politics. The commission's hearings have insured that death-row injustice is never far from the front page.

Ryan's position has changed over the past year. In May he told Northwestern students he doubted there would be another execution on his watch. Now, he is convinced that "moral certainty" in capital cases isn't possible. And he's broadened his focus: "My concern is not just with the death penalty as a singular issue; it's with the entire criminal justice system. If innocent people are sentenced to death--cases that get all kinds of scrutiny--what does that say about invisible, low-level cases, drug cases and so on?" Ryan has ordered the first wholesale reassessment of Illinois's criminal code in forty years; when he talks about sentencing disparities for drug offenses he sounds more like Jesse Jackson than Dennis Hastert.

Ryan argues, with great passion, that criminal-justice reformers need to extend their traditional concern for the poor to middle-class and suburban defendants--building a bridge to new constituencies. "I have seen people charged in drug cases where down comes the full force of the federal Treasury," he says. "Someone who is poor will get a free lawyer. But a truck driver, for instance, will have to mortgage his house and sell his rig to pay a lawyer. Then, when he is found not guilty, where can he go to get that house back, to get on with his life?"

These days Ryan often gets asked how he feels about fellow Republican George W. Bush's love affair with executions. He says he's had a "short conversation" with Bush about it and quickly adds that he has far more authority than Bush to halt individual executions.

Ryan's transformation is a journey still in progress. Most Americans will never have the occasion to feel revulsion for their own role in an execution. But that "jolt" he felt, and the moral anguish that followed, mirror a growing public unease. "A lot of people are like me, I think. The death penalty was a fact of life," he says. "But as people become more and more aware of the unfairness, they become less enthusiastic." Ryan, the heartland conservative, has tested his lifelong support for the death penalty against the evidence, and the institution has come up short: "I question the entire system and the people connected with it."

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