Following is the pre­pared text of Illinois Gov. George Ryan’s speech at Northwestern University College of Law before grant­i­ng clemen­cy to all inmates on the state’s death row
(NYTimes​.com, January 112003)

Four years ago I was sworn in as the 39th Governor of Illinois. That was just four short years ago; that’s when I was a firm believ­er in the American System of Justice and the death penal­ty. I believed that the ulti­mate penal­ty for the tak­ing of a life was admin­is­trat­ed in a just and fair manner.

Today, 3 days before I end my term as Governor, I stand before you to explain my frus­tra­tions and deep con­cerns about both the admin­is­tra­tion and the penal­ty of death. It is fit­ting that we are gath­ered here today at Northwestern University with the stu­dents, teach­ers, lawyers and inves­ti­ga­tors who first shed light on the sor­row­ful con­di­tion of Illinois’ death penal­ty sys­tem. Professors Larry Marshall, Dave Protess have and their stu­dents along with inves­ti­ga­tors Paul Ciolino have gone above the call. They freed the false­ly accused Ford Heights Four, they saved Anthony Porter’s life, they fought for Rolando Cruz and Alex Hernandez. They devot­ed time and effort on behalf of Aaron Patterson, a young man who lost 15 years of his youth sit­ting among the con­demned, and LeRoy Orange, who lost 17 of the best years of his life on death row.

It is also prop­er that we are togeth­er with ded­i­cat­ed peo­ple like Andrea Lyon who has labored on the front lines try­ing cap­i­tal cas­es for many years and who is now devot­ing her pas­sion to cre­at­ing an inno­cence cen­ter at De Paul University. You saved Madison Hobley’s life.

Together you spared the lives and secured the free­dom of 17 men ? men who were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and rot­ting in the con­demned units of our state pris­ons. What you have achieved is of the high­est call­ing ? Thank You!

Yes, it is right that I am here with you, where, in a man­ner of speak­ing, my jour­ney from staunch sup­port­ers of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment to reformer all began. But I must tell you ? since the begin­ning of our jour­ney ? my thoughts and feel­ings about the death penal­ty have changed many, many times. I real­ize that over the course of my reviews I had said that I would not do blan­ket com­mu­ta­tion. I have also said it was an option that was there and I would con­sid­er all options.

During my time in pub­lic office I have always reserved my right to change my mind if I believed it to be in the best pub­lic inter­est, whether it be about tax­es, abor­tions or the death penal­ty. But I must con­fess that the debate with myself has been the tough­est con­cern­ing the death penal­ty. I sup­pose the rea­son the death penal­ty has been the tough­est is because it is so final ? the only pub­lic pol­i­cy that deter­mines who lives and who dies. In addi­tion it is the only issue that attracts most of the legal minds across the coun­try. I have received more advice on this issue than any oth­er pol­i­cy issue I have dealt with in my 35 years of pub­lic ser­vice. I have kept an open mind on both sides of the issues of com­mu­ta­tion for life or death.

I have read, lis­tened to and dis­cussed the issue with the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims as well as the fam­i­lies of the con­demned. I know that any deci­sion I make will not be accept­ed by one side or the oth­er. I know that my deci­sion will be just that — my deci­sion ? based on all the facts I could gath­er over the past 3 years. I may nev­er be com­fort­able with my final deci­sion, but I will know in my heart, that I did my very best to do the right thing.

Having said that I want to share a sto­ry with you:

I grew up in Kankakee which even today is still a small mid­west­ern town, a place where peo­ple tend to know each oth­er. Steve Small was a neigh­bor. I watched him grow up. He would babysit my young chil­dren ? which was not for the faint of heart since Lura Lynn and I had six chil­dren, 5 of them under the age of 3. He was a bright young man who helped run the fam­i­ly busi­ness. He got mar­ried and he and his wife had three chil­dren of their own. Lura Lynn was espe­cial­ly close to him and his fam­i­ly. We took com­fort in know­ing he was there for us and we for him.

One September mid­night he received a call at his home. There had been a break-in at the near­by house he was ren­o­vat­ing. But as he left his house, he was seized at gun­point by kid­nap­pers. His cap­tors buried him alive in a shal­low hole. He suf­fo­cat­ed to death before police could find him.

His killer led inves­ti­ga­tors to where Steve’s body was buried. The killer, Danny Edward was also from my home­town. He now sits on death row. I also know his fam­i­ly. I share this sto­ry with you so that you know I do not come to this as a neo­phyte with­out hav­ing expe­ri­enced a small bit of the bit­ter pill the sur­vivors of mur­der must swallow.

My respon­si­bil­i­ties and oblig­a­tions are more than my neigh­bors and my fam­i­ly. I rep­re­sent all the peo­ple of Illinois, like it or not. The deci­sion I make about our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is felt not only here, but the world over.

The oth­er day, I received a call from for­mer South African President Nelson Mandela who remind­ed me that the United States sets the exam­ple for jus­tice and fair­ness for the rest of the world. Today the United States is not in league with most of our major allies: Europe, Canada, Mexico, most of South and Central America. These coun­tries reject­ed the death penal­ty. We are part­ners in death with sev­er­al third world coun­tries. Even Russia has called a moratorium.

The death penal­ty has been abol­ished in 12 states. In none of these states has the homi­cide rate increased. In Illinois last year we had about 1000 mur­ders, only 2 per­cent of that 1000 were sen­tenced to death. Where is the fair­ness and equal­i­ty in that? The death penal­ty in Illinois is not imposed fair­ly or uni­form­ly because of the absence of stan­dards for the 102 Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sen­tence. Should geog­ra­phy be a fac­tor in deter­min­ing who gets the death sen­tence? I don’t think so but in Illinois it makes a dif­fer­ence. You are 5 times more like­ly to get a death sen­tence for first degree mur­der in the rur­al area of Illinois than you are in Cook County. Where is the jus­tice and fair­ness in that ? where is the proportionality?

The Most Reverend Desmond Tutu wrote to me this week stat­ing that to take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, it is not jus­tice. He says jus­tice allows for mer­cy, clemen­cy and com­pas­sion. These virtues are not weakness.”

In fact the most glar­ing weak­ness is that no mat­ter how effi­cient and fair the death penal­ty may seem in the­o­ry, in actu­al prac­tice it is pri­mar­i­ly inflict­ed upon the weak, the poor, the igno­rant and against racial minori­ties. ” That was a quote from Former California Governor Pat Brown. He wrote that in his book ? Public Justice, Private Mercy he wrote that near­ly 50 years ago ? noth­ing has changed in near­ly 50 years.

I nev­er intend­ed to be an activist on this issue. I watched in sur­prise as freed death row inmate Anthony Porter was released from jail. A free man, he ran into the arms of Northwestern University Professor Dave Protess who poured his heart and soul into prov­ing Porter’s inno­cence with his jour­nal­ism students.

He was 48 hours away from being wheeled into the exe­cu­tion cham­ber where the state would kill him.

It would all be so anti­sep­tic and most of us would not have even paused, except that Anthony Porter was inno­cent of the dou­ble mur­der for which he had been con­demned to die.

After Mr. Porter’s case there was the report by Chicago Tribune reporters Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong doc­u­ment­ing the sys­temic fail­ures of our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Half of the near­ly 300 cap­i­tal cas­es in Illinois had been reversed for a new tri­al or resentencing.

Nearly Half!

33 of the death row inmates were rep­re­sent­ed at tri­al by an attor­ney who had lat­er been dis­barred or at some point sus­pend­ed from prac­tic­ing law.

Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 were African American defen­dants who had been con­vict­ed or con­demned to die by all-white juries.

More than two-thirds of the inmates on death row were African American.

46 inmates were con­vict­ed on the basis of tes­ti­mo­ny from jail­house informants.

I can recall look­ing at these cas­es and the infor­ma­tion from the Mills/​Armstrong series and ask­ing my staff: How does that hap­pen? How in God’s name does that hap­pen? I’m not a lawyer, so some­body explain it to me.

But no one could. Not to this day.

Then over the next few months. There were three more exon­er­at­ed men, freed because their sen­tence hinged on a jail­house infor­mant or new DNA tech­nol­o­gy proved beyond a shad­ow of doubt their innocence.

We then had the dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of exon­er­at­ing more men than we had exe­cut­ed. 13 men found inno­cent, 12 executed.

As I report­ed yes­ter­day, there is not a doubt in my mind that the num­ber of inno­cent men freed from our Death Row stands at 17, with the par­dons of Aaron Patterson, Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard and Leroy Orange.

That is an absolute embar­rass­ment. 17 exon­er­at­ed death row inmates is noth­ing short of a cat­a­stroph­ic fail­ure. But the 13, now 17 men, is just the begin­ning of our sad arith­metic in pros­e­cut­ing mur­der cas­es. During the time we have had cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Illinois, there were at least 33 oth­er peo­ple wrong­ly con­vict­ed on mur­der charges and exon­er­at­ed. Since we rein­stat­ed the death penal­ty there are also 93 peo­ple ? 93 ? where our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem imposed the most severe sanc­tion and lat­er rescind­ed the sen­tence or even released them from cus­tody because they were innocent.

How many more cas­es of wrong­ful con­vic­tion have to occur before we can all agree that the sys­tem is broken?

Throughout this process, I have heard many dif­fer­ent points of view expressed. I have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to review all of the cas­es involv­ing the inmates on death row. I have con­duct­ed pri­vate group meet­ings, one in Springfield and one in Chicago, with the sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers of homi­cide vic­tims. Everyone in the room who want­ed to speak had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to do so. Some want­ed to express their grief, oth­ers want­ed to express their anger. I took it all in.

My com­mis­sion and my staff had been review­ing each and every case for three years. But, I redou­bled my effort to review each case per­son­al­ly in order to respond to the con­cerns of pros­e­cu­tors and vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. This indi­vid­ual review also nat­u­ral­ly result­ed in a col­lec­tive exam­i­na­tion of our entire death penal­ty system.

I also had a meet­ing with a group of peo­ple who are less often heard from, and who are not as pop­u­lar with the media. The fam­i­ly mem­bers of death row inmates have a spe­cial chal­lenge to face. I spent an after­noon with those fam­i­ly mem­bers at a Catholic church here in Chicago. At that meet­ing, I heard a dif­fer­ent kind of pain expressed. Many of these fam­i­lies live with the twin pain of know­ing not only that, in some cas­es, their fam­i­ly mem­ber may have been respon­si­ble for inflict­ing a ter­ri­ble trau­ma on anoth­er fam­i­ly, but also the pain of know­ing that soci­ety has called for anoth­er killing. These par­ents, sib­lings and chil­dren are not to blame for the crime com­mit­ted, yet these inno­cent stand to have their loved ones killed by the state. As Mr. Mandela told me, they are also brand­ed and scarred for life because of the awful crime com­mit­ted by their fam­i­ly member.

Others were even more tor­ment­ed by the fact that their loved one was anoth­er vic­tim, that they were tru­ly inno­cent of the crime for which they were sen­tenced to die.

It was at this meet­ing that I looked into the face of Claude Lee, the father of Eric Lee, who was con­vict­ed of killing Kankakee police offi­cer Anthony Samfay a few years ago. It was a trau­mat­ic moment, once again, for my home­town. A brave offi­cer, part of that thin blue line that pro­tects each of us, was struck down by wan­ton vio­lence. If you will kill a police offi­cer, you have absolute­ly no respect for the laws of man or God.

I’ve know the Lee fam­i­ly for a num­ber of years. There does not appear to be much ques­tion that Eric was guilty of killing the offi­cer. However, I can say now after our review, there is also not much ques­tion that Eric is seri­ous­ly ill, with a his­to­ry of treat­ment for men­tal ill­ness going back a num­ber of years.

The crime he com­mit­ted was a ter­ri­ble one ? killing a police offi­cer. Society demands that the high­est penal­ty be paid.

But I had to ask myself ? could I send anoth­er man’s son to death under the deeply flawed sys­tem of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment we have in Illinois? A trou­bled young man, with a his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness? Could I rely on the sys­tem of jus­tice we have in Illinois not to make anoth­er hor­ri­ble mis­take? Could I rely on a fair sentencing?

In the United States the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of those exe­cut­ed are psy­chot­ic, alco­holic, drug addict­ed or men­tal­ly unsta­ble. The fre­quent­ly are raised in an impov­er­ished and abu­sive environment.

Seldom are peo­ple with mon­ey or pres­tige con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal offens­es, even more sel­dom are they executed.

To quote Governor Brown again, he said soci­ety has both the right and the moral duty to pro­tect itself against its ene­mies. This nat­ur­al and pre­his­toric axiom has nev­er suc­cess­ful­ly been refut­ed. If by ordered death, soci­ety is real­ly pro­tect­ed and our homes and insti­tu­tions guard­ed, then even the most extreme of all penal­ties can be justified.”

Beyond its hon­or and incred­i­bil­i­ty, it has nei­ther pro­tect­ed the inno­cent nor deterred the killers. Publicly sanc­tioned killing has cheap­ened human life and dig­ni­ty with­out the redeem­ing grace which comes from jus­tice metered out swift­ly, even­ly, humanely.”

At stake through­out the clemen­cy process, was whether some, all or none of these inmates on death row would have their sen­tences com­mut­ed from death to life with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty parole.

One of the things dis­cussed with fam­i­ly mem­bers was life with­out parole was seen as a life filled with perks and benefits.

Some inmates on death row don’t want a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Danny Edwards wrote me and told me not to do him any favors because he did­n’t want to face a prospect of a life in prison with­out parole. They will be con­fined in a cell that is about 5‑feet-by-12 feet, usu­al­ly dou­ble-bunked. Our pris­ons have no air con­di­tion­ing, except at our super­max facil­i­ty where inmates are kept in their cell 23 hours a day. In sum­mer months, tem­per­a­tures in these pris­ons exceed one hun­dred degrees. It is a stark and drea­ry exis­tence. They can think about their crimes. Life with­out parole has even, at times, been described by pros­e­cu­tors as a fate worse than death.

Yesterday, I men­tioned a law­suit in Livingston County where a judge ruled the state cor­rec­tions depart­ment can­not force feed two cor­rec­tions inmates who are on a hunger strike. The judge ruled that sui­cide by hunger strike was not an irra­tional action by the inmates, giv­en what their future holds.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment to exe­cute the men­tal­ly retard­ed. It is now the law of the land. How many peo­ple have we already exe­cut­ed who were men­tal­ly retard­ed and are now dead and buried? Although we now know that they have been killed by the state uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly and ille­gal­ly. Is that fair? Is that right?

This court deci­sion was last spring. The General Assembly failed to pass any mea­sure defin­ing what con­sti­tutes men­tal retar­da­tion. We are a rud­der­less ship because they failed to act.

This is even after the Illinois Supreme Court also told law­mak­ers that it is their job and it must be done.

I start­ed with this issue con­cerned about inno­cence. But once I stud­ied, once I pon­dered what had become of our jus­tice sys­tem, I came to care above all about fair­ness. Fairness is fun­da­men­tal to the American sys­tem of jus­tice and our way of life.

The facts I have seen in review­ing each and every one of these cas­es raised ques­tions not only about the inno­cence of peo­ple on death row, but about the fair­ness of the death penal­ty sys­tem as a whole.

If the sys­tem was mak­ing so many errors in deter­min­ing whether some­one was guilty in the first place, how fair­ly and accu­rate­ly was it deter­min­ing which guilty defen­dants deserved to live and which deserved to die? What effect was race hav­ing? What effect was pover­ty having?

And in almost every one of the exon­er­at­ed 17, we not only have break­downs in the sys­tem with police, pros­e­cu­tors and judges, we have ter­ri­ble cas­es of shab­by defense lawyers. There is just no way to sug­ar coat it. There are defense attor­neys that did not con­sult with their clients, did not inves­ti­gate the case and were com­plete­ly unqual­i­fied to han­dle com­plex death penal­ty cas­es. They often did­n’t put much effort into fight­ing a death sen­tence. If your life is on the line, your lawyer ought to be fight­ing for you. As I have said before, there is more than enough blame to go around.

I had more questions.

In Illinois, I have learned, we have 102 deci­sion mak­ers. Each of them are polit­i­cal­ly elect­ed, each behold­en to the demands of their com­mu­ni­ty and, in some cas­es, to the media or espe­cial­ly vocal vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. In cas­es that have the atten­tion of the media and the pub­lic, are deci­sions to seek the death penal­ty more like­ly to occur? What stan­dards are these pros­e­cu­tors using?

Some peo­ple have assailed my pow­er to com­mute sen­tences, a pow­er that lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of legal schol­ars from across the coun­try have defend­ed. But pros­e­cu­tors in Illinois have the ulti­mate com­mu­ta­tion pow­er, a pow­er that is exer­cised every day. They decide who will be sub­ject to the death penal­ty, who will get a plea deal or even who may get a com­plete pass on pros­e­cu­tion. By what objec­tive stan­dards do they make these deci­sions? We do not know, they are not pub­lic. There were more than 1000 mur­ders last year in Illinois. There is no doubt that all mur­ders are hor­rif­ic and cru­el. Yet, less than 2 per­cent of those mur­der defen­dants will receive the death penal­ty. That means more than 98% of vic­tims fam­i­lies do not get, and will not receive what­ev­er sat­is­fac­tion can be derived from the exe­cu­tion of the mur­der­er. Moreover, if you look at the cas­es, as I have done ? both indi­vid­u­al­ly and col­lec­tive­ly — a killing with the same cir­cum­stances might get 40 years in one coun­ty and death in anoth­er coun­ty. I have also seen where co-defen­dants who are equal­ly or even more cul­pa­ble get sen­tenced to a term of years, while anoth­er less cul­pa­ble defen­dant ends up on death row.

In my case-by-case review, I found three peo­ple that fell into this cat­e­go­ry, Mario Flores, Montel Johnson and William Franklin. Today I have com­mut­ed their sen­tences to a term of 40 years to bring their sen­tences into line with their co-defen­dants and to reflect the oth­er extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances of these cases.

Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart has said that the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty on defen­dants in this coun­try is as freak­ish and arbi­trary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning.

For years the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem defend­ed and upheld the impo­si­tion of the death penal­ty for the 17 exon­er­at­ed inmates from Illinois Death row. Yet when the real killers are charged, pros­e­cu­tors have often sought sen­tences of less than death. In the Ford Heights Four Case, Verneal Jimerson and Dennis Williams fought the death sen­tences imposed upon them for 18 years before they were exon­er­at­ed. Later, Cook County pros­e­cu­tors sought life in prison for two of the real killers and a sen­tence of 80 years for a third.

What made the mur­der for which the Ford Heights Four were sen­tenced to die less heinous and wor­thy of the death penal­ty twen­ty years lat­er with a new set of defendants?

We have come very close to hav­ing our state Supreme Court rule our death penal­ty statute — the one that I helped enact in 1977 — uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Former State Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon wrote to me that it was only hap­pen­stance that our statute was not struck down by the state’s high court. When he joined the bench in 1980, three oth­er jus­tices had already said Illinois’ death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. But they got cold feet when a case came along to revis­it the ques­tion. One judge wrote that he want­ed to wait and see if the Supreme Court of the United States would rule on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the new Illinois law. Another said prece­dent required him to fol­low the old state Supreme Court rul­ing with which he disagreed.

Even a phar­ma­cist knows that does­n’t make sense. We would­n’t have a death penal­ty today, and we all would­n’t be strug­gling with this issue, if those votes had been dif­fer­ent. How arbitrary.

Several years after we enact­ed our death penal­ty statute, Girvies Davis was exe­cut­ed. Justice Simon writes that he was exe­cut­ed because of this uncon­sti­tu­tion­al aspect of the Illinois law — the wide lat­i­tude that each Illinois State’s Attorney has to deter­mine what cas­es qual­i­fy for the death penal­ty. One State’s Attorney waived his request for the death sen­tence when Davis’ first sen­tenc­ing was sent back to the tri­al court for a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing. The pros­e­cu­tor was going to seek a life sen­tence. But in the inter­im, a new State’s Attorney took office and changed direc­tions. He once again sought and secured a death sen­tence. Davies was executed.

How fair is that?

After the flaws in our sys­tem were exposed, the Supreme Court of Illinois took it upon itself to begin to reform its’ rules and improve the tri­al of cap­i­tal cas­es. It changed the rule to require that State’s Attorney’s give advance notice to defen­dants that they plan to seek the death penal­ty to require notice before tri­al instead of after con­vic­tion. The Supreme Court also enact­ed new dis­cov­ery rules designed to pre­vent tri­als by ambush and to allow for bet­ter inves­ti­ga­tion of cas­es from the beginning.

But should­n’t that mean if you were tried or sen­tenced before the rules changed, you ought to get a new tri­al or sen­tenc­ing with the new safe­guards of the rules? This issue has divid­ed our Supreme Court, some say­ing yes, a major­i­ty say­ing no. These jus­tices have a life­time of expe­ri­ence with the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and it con­cerns me that these great minds so stren­u­ous­ly dif­fer on an issue of such impor­tance, espe­cial­ly where life or death hangs in the balance.

What are we to make of the stud­ies that showed that more than 50% of Illinois jurors could not under­stand the con­fus­ing and obscure sen­tenc­ing instruc­tions that were being used? What effect did that prob­lem have on the trust­wor­thi­ness of death sen­tences? A review of the cas­es shows that often even the lawyers and judges are con­fused about the instruc­tions — let alone the jurors sit­ting in judg­ment. Cases still come before the Supreme Court with argu­ments about whether the jury instruc­tions were proper.

I spent a good deal of time review­ing these death row cas­es. My staff, many of whom are lawyers, spent busy days and many sleep­less nights answer­ing my ques­tions, pro­vid­ing me with infor­ma­tion, giv­ing me advice. It became clear to me that what­ev­er deci­sion I made, I would be crit­i­cized. It also became clear to me that it was impos­si­ble to make reli­able choic­es about whether our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem had real­ly done its job.

As I came clos­er to my deci­sion, I knew that I was going to have to face the ques­tion of whether I believed so com­plete­ly in the choice I want­ed to make that I could face the prospect of even com­mut­ing the death sen­tence of Daniel Edwards ? the man who had killed a close fam­i­ly friend of mine. I dis­cussed it with my wife, Lura Lynn, who has stood by me all these years. She was angry and dis­ap­point­ed at my deci­sion like many of the fam­i­lies of oth­er vic­tims will be.

I was struck by the anger of the fam­i­lies of mur­der vic­tims. To a fam­i­ly they talked about clo­sure. They plead­ed with me to allow the state to kill an inmate in its name to pro­vide the fam­i­lies with clo­sure. But is that the pur­pose of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment? Is it to soothe the fam­i­lies? And is that tru­ly what the fam­i­lies experience.

I can­not imag­ine los­ing a fam­i­ly mem­ber to mur­der. Nor can I imag­ine spend­ing every wak­ing day for 20 years with a sin­gle mind­ed focus to exe­cute the killer. The sys­tem of death in Illinois is so unsure that it is not unusu­al for cas­es to take 20 years before they are resolved. And thank God. If it had moved any faster, then Anthony Porter, the Ford Heights Four, Ronald Jones, Madison Hobley and the oth­er inno­cent men we’ve exon­er­at­ed might be dead and buried.

But it is cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment for fam­i­ly mem­bers to go through this pain, this legal lim­bo for 20 years. Perhaps it would be less cru­el if we sen­tenced the killers to TAMS to life, and used our resources to bet­ter serve victims.

My heart ached when I heard one grand­moth­er who lost chil­dren in an arson fire. She said she could not afford prop­er grave mark­ers for her grand­chil­dren who died. Why can’t the state help fam­i­lies pro­vide a prop­er burial?

Another crime vic­tim came to our fam­i­ly meet­ings. He believes an inmate sent to death row for anoth­er crime also shot and par­a­lyzed him. The inmate he says gets free health care while the vic­tim is strug­gling to pay his sub­stan­tial med­ical bills and, as a result, he has for­gone get­ting prop­er med­ical care to alle­vi­ate the phys­i­cal pain he endures.

What kind of vic­tims ser­vices are we pro­vid­ing? Are all of our resources geared toward pro­vid­ing this notion of clo­sure by exe­cu­tion instead of tend­ing to the phys­i­cal and social ser­vice needs of vic­tim fam­i­lies? And what kind of val­ues are we instill­ing in these wound­ed fam­i­lies and in the young peo­ple? As Gandhi said, an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind.

President Lincoln often talked of bind­ing up wounds as he sought to pre­serve the Union. We are not ene­mies, but friends. We must not be ene­mies. Though pas­sion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

I have had to con­sid­er not only the hor­ri­ble nature of the crimes that put men on death row in the first place, the ter­ri­ble suf­fer­ing of the sur­viv­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tims, the despair of the fam­i­ly mem­bers of the inmates, but I have also had to watch in frus­tra­tion as mem­bers of the Illinois General Assembly failed to pass even one sub­stan­tive death penal­ty reform. Not one. They could­n’t even agree on ONE. How much more evi­dence is need­ed before the General Assembly will take its respon­si­bil­i­ty in this area seriously?

The fact is that the fail­ure of the General Assembly to act is mere­ly a symp­tom of the larg­er prob­lem. Many peo­ple express the desire to have cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Few, how­ev­er, seem pre­pared to address the tough ques­tions that arise when the sys­tem fails. 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. Prosecutors across our state con­tin­ue to deny that our death penal­ty sys­tem is bro­ken ? or they say if there is a prob­lem, it is real­ly a small one and we can fix it some­how. It is dif­fi­cult to see how the sys­tem can be fixed when not a sin­gle one of the reforms pro­posed by my Capital Punishment Commission has been adopt­ed. Even the reforms the pros­e­cu­tors agree with haven’t been adopted.

So when will the sys­tem be fixed? How much more risk can we afford? Will we actu­al­ly have to exe­cute an inno­cent per­son before the tragedy that is our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem in Illinois is real­ly under­stood? This sum­mer, a United States District court judge held the fed­er­al death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and not­ed that with the num­ber of recent exon­er­a­tions based on DNA and new sci­en­tif­ic tech­nol­o­gy we undoubt­ed­ly exe­cut­ed inno­cent peo­ple before this tech­nol­o­gy emerged.

As I pre­pare to leave office, I had to ask myself whether I could real­ly live with the prospect of know­ing that I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to act, but that I failed to do so because I might be crit­i­cized. Could I take the chance that our cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem might be reformed, that wrong­ful con­vic­tions might not occur, that enter­pris­ing jour­nal­ism stu­dents might free more men from death row? A sys­tem that’s so frag­ile that it depends on young jour­nal­ism stu­dents is seri­ous­ly flawed.

There is no hon­or­able way to kill, no gen­tle way to destroy. There is noth­ing good in war. Except its ending.”

That’s what Abraham Lincoln said about the bloody war between the states. It was a war fought to end the sor­ri­est chap­ter in American his­to­ry – the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery. While we are not in a civ­il war now, we are fac­ing what is shap­ing up to be one of the great civ­il rights strug­gles of our time. Stephen Bright of the Southern Center for Human Rights has tak­en the posi­tion that the death penal­ty is being sought with increas­ing fre­quen­cy in some states against the poor and minorities.

Our own study showed that juries were more like­ly to sen­tence to death if the vic­tim were white than if the vic­tim were black – three-and-a-half times more like­ly to be exact. We are not alone. Just this month Maryland released a study of their death penal­ty sys­tem and racial dis­par­i­ties exist there too.

This week, Mamie Till died. Her son Emmett was lynched in Mississippi in the 1950s. She was a strong advo­cate for civ­il rights and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. In fact just three weeks ago, she was the keynote speak­er at the Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation Event in Chicago. This group, many of whom I’ve met, oppos­es the death penal­ty even though their fam­i­ly mem­bers have been lost to sense­less killing. Mamie’s strength and grace not only ignit­ed the civ­il rights move­ment – includ­ing inspir­ing Rosa Parks to refuse to go to the back of the bus – but inspired mur­der vic­tims’ fam­i­lies until her dying day.

Is our sys­tem fair to all? Is jus­tice blind? These are impor­tant human rights issues.

Another issue that came up in my indi­vid­ual, case-by-case review was the issue of inter­na­tion­al law. The Vienna Convention pro­tects U.S. cit­i­zens abroad and for­eign nation­als in the United States. It pro­vides that if you arrest­ed, you should be afford­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tact your con­sulate. There are five men on death row who were denied that inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized human right. Mexico’s President Vicente Fox con­tact­ed me to express his deep con­cern for the Vienna Convention vio­la­tions. If we do not uphold inter­na­tion­al law here, we can­not expect our cit­i­zens to be pro­tect­ed out­side the United States.

My Commission rec­om­mend­ed the Supreme Court con­duct a pro­por­tion­al­i­ty review of our sys­tem in Illinois. While our appel­late courts per­form a case by case review of the appel­late record, they have not done such a big pic­ture study. Instead, we tin­ker with a case-by-case review as each appeal lands on their docket.

In 1994, near the end of his dis­tin­guished career on the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote an influ­en­tial dis­sent in the body of law on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. 20 years ear­li­er he was part of the court that issued the land­mark Furman deci­sion. The Court decid­ed that the death penal­ty statutes in use through­out the coun­try were fraught with severe flaws that ren­dered them uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Quite frankly, they were the same prob­lems we see here in Illinois. To many, it looked liked the Furman deci­sion meant the end of the death penal­ty in the United States.

This was not the case. Many states respond­ed to Furman by devel­op­ing and enact­ing new and improved death penal­ty statutes. In 1976, four years after it had decid­ed Furman, Justice Blackmun joined the major­i­ty of the United States Supreme Court in decid­ing to give the States a chance with these new and improved death penal­ty statutes. There was great opti­mism in the air.

This was the cli­mate in 1977, when the Illinois leg­is­la­ture was faced with the momen­tous deci­sion of whether to rein­state the death penal­ty in Illinois. I was a mem­ber of the General Assembly at that time and when I pushed the green but­ton in favor of rein­stat­ing the death penal­ty in this great State, I did so with the belief that what­ev­er prob­lems had plagued the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem in the past were now being cured. I am sure that most of my col­leagues who vot­ed with me that day shared that view.

But 20 years lat­er, after affirm­ing hun­dreds of death penal­ty deci­sions, Justice Blackmun came to the real­iza­tion, in the twi­light of his dis­tin­guished career that the death penal­ty remains fraught with arbi­trari­ness, dis­crim­i­na­tion, caprice and mis­take.” He expressed frus­tra­tion with a 20-year strug­gle to devel­op pro­ce­dur­al and sub­stan­tive safe­guards. In a now famous dis­sent he wrote in 1994, ” From this day for­ward, I no longer shall tin­ker with the machin­ery of death.”

One of the few dis­ap­point­ments of my leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive career is that the General Assembly failed to work with me to reform our deeply flawed system.

I don’t know why leg­is­la­tors could not heed the ris­ing voic­es of reform. I don’t know how many more sys­temic flaws we need­ed to uncov­er before they would be spurred to action.

Three times I pro­posed reform­ing the sys­tem with a pack­age that would restrict the use of jail­house snitch­es, cre­ate a statewide pan­el to deter­mine death eli­gi­ble cas­es, and reduce the num­ber of crimes eli­gi­ble for death. These reforms would not have cre­at­ed a per­fect sys­tem, but they would have dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduced the chance for error in the admin­is­tra­tion of the ulti­mate penalty.

The Governor has the con­sti­tu­tion­al role in our state of act­ing in the inter­est of jus­tice and fair­ness. Our state con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides broad pow­er to the Governor to issue reprieves, par­dons and com­mu­ta­tions. Our Supreme Court has remind­ed inmates peti­tion­ing them that the last resort for relief is the governor.

At times the exec­u­tive clemen­cy pow­er has per­haps been a crutch for courts to avoid mak­ing the kind of major change that I believe our sys­tem needs.

Our sys­temic case-by-case review has found more cas­es of inno­cent men wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death row. Because our three year study has found only more ques­tions about the fair­ness of the sen­tenc­ing; because of the spec­tac­u­lar fail­ure to reform the sys­tem; because we have seen jus­tice delayed for count­less death row inmates with poten­tial­ly mer­i­to­ri­ous claims; because the Illinois death penal­ty sys­tem is arbi­trary and capri­cious — and there­fore immoral — I no longer shall tin­ker with the machin­ery of death.

I can­not say it more elo­quent­ly than Justice Blackmun.

The leg­is­la­ture could­n’t reform it.

Lawmakers won’t repeal it.

But I will not stand for it.

I must act.

Our cap­i­tal sys­tem is haunt­ed by the demon of error, error in deter­min­ing guilt, and error in deter­min­ing who among the guilty deserves to die. Because of all of these rea­sons today I am com­mut­ing the sen­tences of all death row inmates.

This is a blan­ket com­mu­ta­tion. I real­ize it will draw ridicule, scorn and anger from many who oppose this deci­sion. They will say I am usurp­ing the deci­sions of judges and juries and state leg­is­la­tors. But as I have said, the peo­ple of our state have vest­ed in me to act in the inter­est of jus­tice. Even if the exer­cise of my pow­er becomes my bur­den I will bear it. Our con­sti­tu­tion com­pels it. I sought this office, and even in my final days of hold­ing it I can­not shrink from the oblig­a­tions to jus­tice and fair­ness that it demands.

There have been many nights where my staff and I have been deprived of sleep in order to con­duct our exhaus­tive review of the sys­tem. But I can tell you this: I will sleep well know­ing I made the right decision.

As I said when I declared the mora­to­ri­um, it is time for a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion on the death penal­ty. While our expe­ri­ence in Illinois has indeed sparked a debate, we have fall­en short of a ratio­nal dis­cus­sion. Yet if I did not take this action, I feared that there would be no com­pre­hen­sive and thor­ough inquiry into the guilt of the indi­vid­u­als on death row or of the fair­ness of the sen­tences applied.

To say it plain­ly one more time- the Illinois cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem is bro­ken. It has tak­en inno­cent men to a hair’s breadth escape from their unjust exe­cu­tion. Legislatures past have refused to fix it. Our new leg­is­la­ture and our new Governor must act to rid our state of the shame of threat­en­ing the inno­cent with exe­cu­tion and the guilty with unfairness.

In the days ahead, I will pray that we can open our hearts and pro­vide some­thing for vic­tims’ fam­i­lies oth­er than the hope of revenge. Lincoln once said: ” I have always found that mer­cy bears rich­er fruits than strict jus­tice.” I can only hope that will be so. God bless you. And God bless the peo­ple of Illinois.