Governor George Ryan was a career politician dogged by accusations of corruption, a pro-death penalty Republican who inexplicably became a champion of abolition. What could account for his conversion? Could it be that, as Governor, he was forced to abandon ideology and confront the realities of capital punishment in America?
Recently, the Star devoted a letter forum to Illinois Governor Ryan’s commutation of the death sentences of convicts on his state’s death row. The letters were instructive. Failure to execute was an insult to the victims, the judges and juries. Justice demands that evil people be put to death. Ryan had his nerve.
Well, maybe.
Governor George Ryan was a career politician dogged by accusations of corruption, a pro-death penalty Republican who inexplicably became a champion of abolition. What could account for his conversion? Could it be that, as Governor, he was forced to abandon ideology and confront the realities of capital punishment in America?
· There is no consistency in the application of the death penalty. Prosecutors in adjoining counties make different decisions; some states have capital punishment and others do not. Some reserve death for the most heinous crimes; others make a wide range of crimes capital offenses.
· We don’t execute people with money. If an accused can afford his own lawyer, he is unlikely to face the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime. (Prosecutors didn’t even try for the ultimate penalty in the O.J. Simpson case, but things were different for Susan Smith, the demented mom who drove her two kids into a lake and could only afford a public defender.)
· People who kill white people are far more likely to get the death penalty than those who kill blacks.
· Executing someone does keep that person from committing additional crimes, but even death penalty advocates admit that it doesn’t deter others. Indeed, states with the highest number of executions have higher murder rates than states without the death penalty.
· Generally, a capital trial costs three times what it would cost to imprison a prisoner for the rest of his life. There are those who would like to cut off appeals as a cost-saving measure; however, there is very good reason not to do so.
· The reason? The justice system makes lots of mistakes. We are only beginning to recognize the extent to which the system is broken. DNA testing has exonerated a large number of people on and off death row, but lawyers and journalists had begun to turn the rock over even before such testing became common. It is certainly true that even a very reliable system will not be perfect, and that lack of perfection is not a sufficient reason to abolish capital punishment. But we are not dealing with a reliable system.
· Most countries don’t have the death penalty, and their laws prohibit extradition of criminals who have committed capital crimes to countries that do. This means we cannot try—and interrogate—operatives arrested by our allies in the War on Terrorism.
Many people have moral compunctions or religious beliefs that lead them to oppose capital punishment. I’m not one of them, and I don’t think Governor Ryan is either. It’s just hard to support a system that’s arbitrary, expensive and far, far too often wrong.