llinois Governor George Ryan commuted every death sentence to life without parole. I happened to catch part of his speech announcing his decision. He found that the process in Illinois was fundamentally flawed – it applied the death penalty capriciously, it convicted the innocent, and it was biased against minorities and the poor. I could understand his reasons except for one – he cited the fact that some blacks were judged, “not by their peers, but by all white juries.” Excuse me, but I find that remark offensive and racist. It simply assumes that white people are biased against blacks, and it explicitly states that blacks and whites are not peers – we aren’t equal.

My first reaction was that Governor Ryan had abdicated his responsibilities as Governor by issuing a blanket commutation. While some of the people on death row might not be guilty or deserving, certainly not all were. To exercise his responsibility properly, shouldn’t he have reviewed the cases and made a case by case decision? But wouldn’t doing that be replacing the jury’s judgement with his own? Wouldn’t that be in effect saying that his judgement was superior to the jury’s? I many of the cases, there is no doubt about the guilt of the defendant. The Post Dispatch ran synopsizes of the affected cases from the Metro East, and they were all clearly guilty, and guilty of heinous crimes. But in other cases, there would doubt. And people could draw different conclusions, and perhaps to do justice in those cases life imprisonment or even release would be more appropriate. And if the system itself truly was fundamentally flawed, then how could you accept any of the applications of the penalty? You would be facing the choice of doing nothing, substituting your judgement for the jury’s, or invalidating the death penalty system as a whole.

The next question is what comes next? Shouldn’t he have made every effort during his term to fix the problems with the justice system in Illinois – frankly, if the death penalty process is as broken as he claims, I can’t believe the rest of the system is just fine. If confessions are being coerced, then there aren’t being coerced just in death penalty cases. If the application is of the death penalty is biased, capricious, and punishing the innocent with the guilty, I simply can’t believe that these problems affect only death penalty cases – the entire justice system must be shot through with them. Well, Governor Ryan has tried to fix the death penalty (along with other reforms), but his efforts haven’t gone anywhere in the legislature. And the incoming Governor Rod Blagojevich doesn’t seem inclined to do anything either. So what we are left with is a dramatic gesture and more polarization; and rather than needed reform, we’ll have a more angry status quo.