Commutation of Illinois Death Sentences Upheld

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled Friday that former Gov. George Ryan had the right to commute the sentences of all the state’s death row inmates before he left office last year.

The decision is the latest chapter in the debate over death penalty laws, which intensified in 2000 when Ryan instituted a moratorium on executions. He acted after it became evident that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted.

In January 2003, Ryan moved 167 prisoners off Illinois’ death row, commuting their sentences to life in prison. The former governor was later nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Critics claimed at the time that Ryan’s broad use of his clemency powers was an effort to skirt the will of voters and slowed whatever momentum had been in place to reform the system.

But death penalty critics and attorneys for the state’s executive branch insisted Ryan did nothing wrong, as the state Constitution allows a governor to “grant reprieves, commutations and pardons ... for all offenses on such terms as he thinks proper.”

In its unanimous decision, the state Supreme Court agreed, ruling that a governor does not need the approval or review of an outside entity to commute a prisoner’s death sentence. Justice Bob Thomas wrote: “We believe that the grant of authority given the governor ... is sufficiently broad to allow former Gov. Ryan to do what he did.”

The court, however, did point out that future pardons should be handled on a case-by-case basis, instead of the sweeping approach Ryan used when he cleared out death row.

Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit in September, claiming Ryan had overstepped his power and challenging 32 of the cases he had commuted.

The suit argued that some of the prisoners shouldn’t have qualified for clemency because they hadn’t asked for it. Others, Madigan said, weren’t officially on death row because their cases were under review in lower courts.

In a statement Friday, Madigan said that while the state had lost its case, she was pleased that “the Supreme Court resolved these questions that have a significant impact on the administration of justice.”

“I brought this case to provide an orderly and expeditious resolution of all of the commutation cases where these issues were raised,” she said.

Defense attorneys said the court’s ruling didn’t surprise them.

“The law, on its face, is quite clear. The governor has this power, and nothing in the law tells him how he can or cannot exercise this,” said Robert Loeb, a criminal defense attorney and former chairman of a committee set up by the Illinois Bar Assn. to examine death penalty laws.

“At best, this complaint was sour grapes and political posturing by prosecutors and the people they represent, who were dissatisfied with the commutations,” he said.

Friday’s ruling adds to a wave of legal and legislative efforts in Illinois to fix what many call a seriously flawed criminal justice system.

State lawmakers proposed a slew of bills last year aimed at changing the death penalty system. In November, the state Legislature passed a law that allows defendants to have greater access to evidence, mandates that the death penalty not be used in cases that rely on only one witness and prevents the mentally retarded from being executed.

It also gives the Illinois Supreme Court more leeway in tossing out death sentences it believes are “fundamentally unjust.”

Two inmates have been sent to death row since Ryan issued his blanket commutation.

“I have no doubt that these reforms will help make the Illinois criminal system the most fair in the nation,” said Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University’s School of Law. “But even as good as some of these reforms are, and as good as today’s decision is,” Warden said, “they don’t cure some of the fundamental problems of the death penalty.”

Ryan, 69, is under federal indictment, accused in a racketeering scandal of taking bribes in return for influencing the awarding of state contracts.