[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 7 (Wednesday, January 15, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S843-S844]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           ILLINOIS GOVERNOR GEORGE RYAN'S CLEMENCY DECISION

  Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, I rise today to give my perspective on 
the recent decision by Illinois Governor George Ryan to pardon four 
death row inmates and to commute the death sentences of 167 other death 
row inmates. His action effectively clears Illinois' death row, the 
eighth largest death row in the Nation. It is the broadest clemency of 
death row inmates ever granted by a Governor.
  I understand that there are some, particularly, State prosecutors and 
victims' families, who are unhappy with Governor Ryan's decision. I 
understand that victims' families who support capital punishment have, 
justifiably, very strong feelings.
  But these 167 inmates are not walking free. They won't be executed, 
but almost all of them will spend the rest of their lives behind bars 
without the possibility of parole. But it also means that if, in fact, 
it is shown in the near future they did not commit murder, they still 
have the chance to be set free.
  Many murderers do not receive the death penalty, even in Illinois. 
Indeed, the Illinois Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment found 
that decisions to put these particular individuals on death row, while 
sparing others, were not made by a system that meets basic standards of 
fairness and justice.

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  Fairness and justice, those are the principles that should guide our 
criminal justice system, especially the administration of the death 
penalty.
  Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with Governor Ryan's 
clemency decision, most Americans should be able to agree that the 
current system is broken. Even some State prosecutors in Illinois, who 
disagreed with Ryan's clemency decision, acknowledged that the people 
of Illinois must debate whether they want a death penalty at all, 
before debating what kinds of reforms the State should adopt. I think 
it is important to take a moment to review how Illinois reached this 
point because I think Congress and the Nation can learn a valuable 
lesson from Illinois' remarkable experience.
  Three years ago, Governor Ryan, a death penalty supporter, first made 
national headlines when he was the first Governor in the Nation to 
place a moratorium on executions. He did so after seeing irrefutable 
evidence that the system in Illinois risks executing the innocent. 
Since the death penalty was reinstated in Illinois in 1977, Illinois 
had executed 12 people. But, during this same time, another 13 death 
row inmates were found to be innocent and to have been wrongfully 
sentenced to death.
  I believe that Governor Ryan has showed uncommon courage. He 
acknowledged that the system is broken. But he did not stop there. He 
took steps to address the flaws in his State's death penalty system. 
First, he took the reasonable and necessary step of placing a 
moratorium on executions. He then created a blue ribbon commission, 
including former U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, one of our former 
colleagues, Senator Paul Simon, and lawyer and novelist, Scott Turow. 
The Commission included both death penalty proponents and opponents.
  Governor Ryan instructed the Commission to review the State's death 
penalty system and to advise him on how to reduce the risk of executing 
the innocent and to ensure fairness in the system. After a 2-year long 
study, the Commission issued a comprehensive report and set forth 85 
recommendations for reform of the Illinois death penalty system. These 
recommendations address difficult issues like inadequate defense 
counsel, executions of the mentally retarded, coerced confessions, and 
the problem of wrongful convictions based solely on the testimony of a 
jailhouse snitch or a single eyewitness. The Commission's work is the 
first, and, so far, only, comprehensive review of a death penalty 
system undertaken by a State or Federal Government in the modern death 
penalty era.
  When the Commission released its report last April, Governor Ryan 
again acted decisively. He supported its recommendations and urged the 
Illinois State legislature to implement the necessary reforms of the 
system. Unfortunately, the legislative session ended without the 
legislature passing even a single one of the Commission's 85 
recommendations.
  Faced with the legislature's failure to act to fix the system and the 
fact that the fate of over 160 death row inmates remained in the 
balance, Governor Ryan took yet another bold, but reasonable step. He 
conducted clemency hearings and reviewed the records of each person on 
death row. He heard from victims' families, from prosecutors, from 
defense counsel, and from the families of death row inmates. After this 
careful and painstaking review, he pardoned four men whom he believed 
had compelling claims of innocence. Unable to conclude that the 
remaining sentences were not tainted by the problems with the system 
catalogued by the Commission, he decided to commute them to life in 
prison without parole.
  Governor Ryan's leadership on this issue is a model for the Nation, a 
legacy that I am convinced will live on long after he leaves office.
  He now joins Americans like former Supreme Court Justices Lewis 
Powell and Harry Blackmun, who supported capital punishment but later 
in their lives came to re-think their position on the issue.
  When the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as a form of 
cruel and unusual punishment in 1972 in Furman v. Georgia, Justice 
Powell dissented from the majority position. He supported capital 
punishment. In fact, he later wrote the decision in McCleskey v. Kemp 
in 1987, which denied a challenge to the death penalty on the grounds 
that it was applied in a discriminatory manner against African 
Americans. In 1991, however, Justice Powell told his biographer that he 
had decided that capital punishment should be abolished.
  Late in his career on the Court, Justice Blackmun penned the 
following eloquent, frequently quoted dissent, in 1994:

       From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the 
     machinery of death. For more than 20 years I have 
     endeavored--indeed, I have struggled--along with a majority 
     of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules 
     that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to 
     the death penalty endeavor. Rather than continue to coddle 
     the Court's delusion that the desired level of fairness has 
     been achieved and the need for regulation eviscerated, I feel 
     morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that 
     the death penalty experiment has failed.

  Like Justice Powell, Justice Blackmun, and now Governor Ryan, it is 
my hope that other judges and public officials will take the time to 
reexamine the ultimate punishment our society imposes.
  Governor Ryan acted only after a lengthy study and a consideration of 
all the alternatives. In a civilized country committed to equal 
justice, I hope that other public officials, including my colleagues 
here in the Congress, can be strong enough to take the steps that 
Governor Ryan took to reconsider the flawed death penalty system in 
this country.
  Last week, the University of Maryland released a study showing 
significant racial and geographic disparities in the Maryland death 
penalty system. While this study is not a comprehensive review of the 
entire Maryland death penalty system, its disturbing findings should be 
reason enough to continue the moratorium on executions until the 
concerns raised by the study are addressed.
  More importantly, we know that the Illinois and Maryland experiences 
are not unique. With over 100 innocent people on death row across the 
Nation later exonerated in the modern death penalty era, some just days 
before they were scheduled to be executed, we know that the 
administration of the death penalty nationwide is seriously flawed.
  It is past time for Congress to meet its responsibility of ensuring 
fairness and justice in our criminal justice system, especially 
concerning the administration of the death penalty. Congress should 
place a moratorium on Federal executions and urge the States to do the 
same, while a National Commission on the Death Penalty reviews the 
fairness of the death penalty systems at the Federal and State levels. 
I urge my colleagues to support my bill, S. 132, the National Death 
Penalty Moratorium Act.
  Congress has an important responsibility to ensure that innocent 
people are not executed and that constitutional protections are 
respected in the administration of capital punishment across the 
country. Congress should not shirk this responsibility. It is time to 
take a timeout on executions and to conduct a thorough, top-to-bottom 
review of the death penalty, not only in Illinois or Maryland, but 
nationwide.

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