100 Years Apart, Two Governors Dared to Attack Death Penalty
Pacific News Service, Commentary, Michael A. Kroll, Posted: Jan 14, 2003
To find the type of courage shown by Illinois Gov. George Ryan's recent death-penalty ruling, PNS contributor Michael Kroll goes back more than a century, to another Illinois governor who risked his career in a capital case to uphold principle.
Whatever you think about the death penalty, you've got to stand in awe of Illinois Gov. George Ryan -- a politician with the courage of his unpopular convictions.
As the last official act of his Republican administration, Ryan granted commutations to all 167 people condemned to death in his state and awaiting execution. (He had, the day before, granted full pardons to four other condemned prisoners whom he had determined to be innocent victims of police misconduct.)
The reasons Ryan gave for this blanket clemency poison every death penalty scheme in the country, from Virginia and Alabama to California and Texas. They include:
Of course, every governor of a death penalty state will now say that Illinois is unique in the deficiencies of its criminal justice system. For example, after Ryan's bombshell, a spokesperson for California Gov. Gray Davis described the largest death row in the country by asserting: "We have a totally different system." The difference is not in the governors' respective systems, but in their respective courage.
As a Californian, I cannot conceive of our governor risking his political capital for principle as Ryan did. "I realize it will draw ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this decision," Ryan stated, but "even if the exercise of my power becomes my burden, I will bear it... I cannot shrink from the obligations to justice and fairness that it demands."
Ryan has been compared to former California Gov. Pat Brown, who commuted the sentences of 23 condemned men (and allowed 36 others to go to the gas chamber) during his two-term tenure. Ryan acknowledged that Brown's book, "Public Justice, Private Mercy: A Governor's Education on Death Row," contributed to his controversial decision. But there is a far more compelling comparison -- one from Ryan's own state.
Whether by coincidence or through some mysterious quality inherent in a state that also gave us Abraham Lincoln, another Illinois governor exhibited courage more than 100 years ago comparable to Ryan's.
On May 3, 1886, a labor demonstration at the McCormick Harvester plant in Chicago led to the police shooting a demonstrator to death. An angry crowd gathered the next day to protest the killing. When the police attempted to break it up, someone -- never identified -- threw a bomb that killed eight police officers. The public outcry against the "anarchists" and "terrorists" was predictably ferocious.
With intense pressure to "get the radicals," eight men were eventually charged with murder. Seven of them were sentenced to death, despite the absence of any evidence linking them to the crime. Four were hanged and one committed suicide.
Six years later a German immigrant, John Peter Altgeld, was elected governor of Illinois. Immediately, he set out to investigate the reliability of the convictions and executions, over the loud objections of his political advisors, to whom he said, "By God, if I decide that they are innocent, I will pardon them if I never hold office another day!" On June 26, 1893, just a year after assuming office, Gov. Altgeld pardoned the three surviving Haymarket prisoners.
Like the man who succeeded him to the Illinois statehouse 106 years later, Altgeld was subjected to a firestorm of angry denunciations by the press, politicians and the public. Foreshadowing the anti-immigrant hysteria of our own day, the Chicago Tribune wrote that Altgeld had not "a drop of true American blood in his veins. He does not reason like an American, does not feel like one, and consequently does not behave like one." (In 1946, Howard Fast, soon to fall victim to McCarthyism's blacklist, wrote a biography of Altgeld titled, "The American.")
For the next three years, Altgeld was predictably vilified as a dangerous foreigner and radical. In 1896, he was defeated in his bid for a second term. Gov. Ryan understood all of this when he pardoned four innocent men from death row and commuted the sentences of the remaining 167. As if addressing his fellow governors, Ryan's clemency message stated: "It is easier and more comfortable for politicians to be tough on crime and support the death penalty. It wins votes. But when it comes to admitting that we have a problem, most run for cover."
Gov. Ryan will now take his place of honor alongside Gov. Altgeld in the annals of political courage. Let us hope it will not take another century before another politician acts courageously to uphold principle.
Kroll (mkmitigates@hotmail.com) works with juvenile hall writers for The Beat Within, a project of Pacific News Service. He is the founding director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C. Read Related article.
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