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here's the column:
Ryan will be counted a hero
By Rich Lewis January 16, 2003
Bill Clinton infuriated the nation as he left office in January 2001 by pardoning 140 people, some of whom, such as financier Marc Rich, obviously were rewarded for making fat political contributions or paying the right people to lobby on their behalf.
Clinton had, indeed, brought disgrace upon a power that should be reserved for making important statements about justice and healing — and not to pay off privileged cronies.
In other words, the power and its variants should be used in exactly the way that outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan used it last week.
Just two days before his term expired, Ryan announced he was granting clemency to 167 inmates who were facing execution. They would, instead, serve life sentences without the possibility of parole.
In a lengthy and emotional speech, Ryan correctly called the death penalty issue "one of the great civil rights struggles of our time."
His own change of heart was dramatic. When sworn into office four years earlier, he had been "a firm believer in the... death penalty" because he believed it was administered "in a just and fair manner."
But it had become clear to him that the system of capital punishment "is haunted by the demon of error."
He recounted the story of Anthony Porter, freed from jail just 48 hours before he was to be ritually killed by the state for a crime he did not commit. A team of students, teachers and lawyers from Northwestern University had proven Porter's innocence — one of 17 such cases nationally in recent years.
In the end, Ryan said, the system is "immoral" and he would no longer be content to "tinker with the machinery of death."
Instead, he would simply stop the 167 killings over which he had power.
Ryan acknowledged that his decision would draw "ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this decision." And it has. But it was a public act of moral courage rarely seen these days.
The truth is, as the Washington Post recently reported, the death penalty is in decline. Thirty-eight states — including Pennsylvania — have it on the books, but only 13 used it in 2002, fewer than in any year since 1993.
Of the 71 convicts killed last year, 33 died in Texas alone. Only three executions took place outside the South — in California, Ohio and Missouri.
As the Post wrote, capital punishment "should have been banned long ago," but its "continued marginalization" to just a few states suggests it gradually may disappear. Ryan's defiance will be assailed as an outrageous act of ego — how dare one man put his convictions ahead of the will of the people? — but in the long run it will be regarded as a watershed moment in the struggle to end this barbaric practice.
Ryan eventually will be deemed a hero, as will all who stand against the death penalty while it is still "unpopular" to do so.
As for Pennsylvania, I am ashamed that my home state is among the death penalty states. Three convicts have been executed here since 1995, and 244 are now on death row.
On Tuesday Gov.-elect Ed Rendell said he has no plans to review the death-penalty system here. He said he has seen "no evidence" it is flawed.
That conclusion is wrong both philosophically and in fact.
Philosophically, it reminds me of a visit I made to the doctor many years ago. He asked whether I had any illnesses or chronic conditions. I said no.
Then he asked, "Do you smoke?" and when I answered yes, he said, "Then you are sick."
What he meant, of course, was that smoking in itself is a sickness, whether or not I chose to call it such.
The death penalty is just like that — it is flawed in its very nature, evil because of what it is — not because of how it's used.
But Rendell is wrong to believe it is even being used here without problems.
On Tuesday a federal appeals court ruled that George Banks should be removed from Pennsylvania's death row because he had received an unfair sentencing hearing.
The problem was with the jury instructions given in the 1980s, when Banks, who murdered 13 people, was sentenced.
The flawed instructions were used in about 30 cases and may have led to the imposition of the death penalty in some cases where jury members did not unanimously agree, which is required by law.
It's a small mistake — if anything that could result in unjustified state-sanctioned murder can be called "small" — but it's just another example of how the system is "haunted by the demon of error."
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