| Former Governor George Ryan Just 48 hours before the end of his term, Illinois Governor George Ryan made history by commuting every previous death row sentence in the state. In addition to sparing the lives of 171 inmates, he fully pardoned four men—and three of them were set free. This landmark decision has sparked a national discussion on the death penalty. Now, Mr. Ryan talks about his extremely controversial choice. Why Did He Do It? Since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, more death row inmates had been found innocent than executed. "We had exonerated 13 people out of 25 and executed 12," he explains. After instituting a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, Ryan created a commission of former judges, lawyers and other professionals to examine the system. "We found out that the error rate [of convicting innocents] was 60%," he told Oprah. "That's six in ten people...I determined the only way I could be safe in what I was going to do was to issue a blanket clemency." How Could Innocent People be Convicted? In some cases—such as those of the four men pardoned—inmates landed on death row solely by confessing to a crime. However, it's been determined that those confessions were coerced through threats and torture. In other cases, defendants have been given poor attorneys, they haven't been judged by their peers, or courts haven't looked at new DNA evidence. Additionally, Ryan feels that the current system is "arbitrary and capricious"—in other words, not equal for everyone. Different counties can handle cases in different ways. For instance, a crime committed in one county may be tried and punished more or less severely than it would be in another. "The chance of getting the death penalty is five times greater in rural areas than it is in Cook County [home to metropolitan Chicago]," Ryan explains. "I think it's three and a half times higher if a black person kills a white person. There's no uniformity. I don't know where the justice is in that." What About the Guilty Prisoners? "Will we ever have a perfect system? I doubt it. If we're not going to have a perfect system, we should have as good of one as possible. There's no question about it: We took guilty people off of death row. Those people will be in jail for the rest of their lives. We took them off death row because I couldn't tell if they were innocent or guilty. To be safe with the horrible record we had, the only solution was to give everyone clemency." — former Illinois Governor George Ryan |