zentronix: dubwise & hiphopcentric

Saturday, January 11, 2003

An article from today's Chicago Tribune on Governor Ryan's commuting of all death row sentences. Sometimes the right thing gets done.

'The system has failed'

Ryan condemns injustice, pardons 6; paves the way for sweeping clemency
By Steve Mills and Christi Parsons
Tribune staff reporters

January 11, 2003, 9:20 AM CST

Update: Gov. George Ryan will issue a blanket clemency to all inmates on Illinois' Death Row, a spokesman for the governor confirmed today.

Saying he wanted to correct a "manifest injustice," Gov. George Ryan on Friday pardoned four Death Row inmates and laid the groundwork for an unprecedented act of clemency by a U.S. governor.

Although aides said Ryan continued to struggle late Friday with whether to commute the sentences of all remaining 156 Death Row inmates, sources said he ordered that letters be delivered overnight notifying victims' families that Ryan would in fact grant a blanket commutation.

In the two-page letter, Ryan told family members how difficult it had been to reach the decision to grant blanket commutations, but he said it was the only way to prevent an innocent person from being executed--his greatest concern. Ryan closed the letter with the words, "May God bless you."

Ryan, who leaves office Monday, loaded his Friday announcement of the pardons with indications he would commute the death sentences to life in prison without parole. He pointed out in a speech that the state Constitution provides a governor broad powers. He noted as well that life in prison is a stark existence and that inmates "have no freedom."

The majority of Ryan's speech, though, focused on the pardons--based on innocence--to four men who together have spent nearly 60 years on Death Row and whose cases are linked by allegations of torture by Chicago police. He said the cases "cry out to be fixed."

"Today, I shall be a friend to Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Aaron Patterson and Leroy Orange," Ryan said, naming the four prisoners, in his address at DePaul University law school in Chicago. "Today, I am pardoning them of crimes for which they were wrongfully prosecuted and sentenced to die."

"The system has failed for all four men," he said. "And it has failed the people of this state."

Ryan also pardoned Gary Dotson, who was convicted of a 1979 rape but later exonerated by DNA testing, and Miguel Castillo, who was released two years ago after spending more than 11 years in prison for murder when jail records showed he was in custody when the crime was committed.

The words brought tears of joy to the families of the inmates and strong condemnation from prosecutors across the state and the victims' families.

Sitting in the DePaul audience and waiting for Ryan to arrive, Hobley's sister Robin read a prepared copy of the governor's speech and began to cry as she discovered her brother would be set free.

"I've read so many horrible [court] transcripts over 16 years. I don't believe what I'm reading," she said. "Oh, Gov. Ryan, thank you. ... It seems just like Christmas and New Year's and a birthday all wrapped up into one."

Patterson's mother, Joanne, searched a copy of Ryan's speech for words about her son and began to shake as she found them. She said the speech confirmed what she had hoped and prayed for over the last week as Patterson's name was floated as a likely candidate for a pardon.

"Now that I read this," she said, "everything is really just fine."

Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine called the pardons "outrageous and unconscionable."

"All of these cases would have been best left for consideration by the courts which have the experience, the training and the wisdom to decide innocence or guilt," Devine said at a Friday night news conference. "Instead, they were ripped away from the justice system by a man who is a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade."

Devine said Ryan "jumped into bed with the defense bar," accusing him of not seeking information from prosecutors to get their side of the cases. He refused to say whether he believed the four had been tortured by police.

Devine also said he would have to review the governor's action before deciding whether to consider the four cases closed or to reopen the investigations.

"By his actions today the governor has breached faith with the memory of the dead victims, their families and the people he was elected to serve," he said.

Ollie Dodds, whose daughter was one of seven victims of a 1987 arson fire that sent Hobley to Death Row, said the pardons left her tired and heartbroken.

"It's put me in a painful spirit," said Dodds, who still believes that Hobley set the fire that killed Johnnie Mae Dodds. "I just couldn't believe what he was saying. If he had lost a daughter or a son in that fire, I bet he wouldn't have done it."

Gayla Ridgell Redmond, whose father was murdered in 1984 in the case that sent Howard to Death Row, said she was struggling with her emotions.

"I guess I have mixed feelings about it," she said. "I'm not an advocate of the death penalty, so I wasn't looking for him to be executed," she said. "But for him to be totally pardoned of the crime--I can't say I'm too happy."

Redmond, who lives on Chicago's Far South Side, said she was comforted that Howard has to serve another 18 years for other convictions--cases that Ryan said also are tainted.

Still, Redmond said nothing would "bring my dad back."

Paul Dengel, Howard's attorney on his death penalty case, said he would begin to investigate that case as well in the hopes of obtaining Howard's release.

Gov.-elect Rod Blagojevich, who said he backs the death penalty in "clear-cut and extreme cases," urged Ryan not to grant the blanket clemency Saturday.

"The goal here is to serve justice, and I oppose blanket clemencies and blanket pardons," Blagojevich said. "I hope he reviewed all those cases carefully and he reached his conclusions based on each individual fact pattern in each case. If he did that and he made a judgment that justice will be served by that, then I have no quarrel with that."

But Ryan said it was the system--from prosecutors and police to judges and defense attorneys--that had failed.

He said Chicago Police Cmdr. Jon Burge and detectives working for him in the former Burnside Area headquarters on the South Side routinely tortured suspects as they sought to obtain murder confessions.

He said justice is too often subverted by prosecutors hiding behind procedural rules to keep judges or juries from hearing all the facts in a case.

And he said defense lawyers often made colossal failures. In the case of Orange, Ryan said his attorney never raised his claim that police electric-shocked him.

Most of the cases, he said, relied heavily on dubious confessions.

"In some way I can see how rogue cops, 20 years ago, could run wild. I can see how, in a different time, they perhaps were able to manipulate the system. What I can't understand is why the courts can't find a way to act in the interest of justice," Ryan said as the crowd of students and family members broke into applause.

Ryan even cited little-known evidence in some cases, such as a sworn affidavit obtained by Northwestern University journalism students from a man who said another man confessed to being involved in the murders for which Patterson was found guilty and condemned.

Police Supt. Terry Hillard, while not directly laying blame for the pardons on Burge, nevertheless made clear that Burge's actions had "disgraced the integrity and honor" of the Chicago Police Department and led to his firing. He noted the department was cooperating with a special prosecutor's investigation into the torture allegations.

Flint Taylor, who represented Patterson and has worked for years to prove the allegations against Burge, said the pardons supported the charges of misconduct against Burge as well as against county prosecutors. He said the pardons should fuel the inquiry by the special prosecutor, not slow it.

"It would be shocking if people say this takes care of it," Taylor said. "There's still a tremendous amount of unfinished business. There are people who haven't been released. ... And what about the people who put them there."

Burge, reached at his home in Florida, declined to comment.

Ryan said his office's three years of study of the death penalty and its review of the cases of the state's 160 Death Row inmates had convinced him that Hobley, Patterson, Howard and Orange were innocent.

He was equally convinced, he said, the legislature had failed in its duty to pass reforms recommended by the blue-ribbon commission of prosecutors, defense attorneys, former judges and other experts he appointed to study the death penalty when declaring a moratorium on executions in January 2000.

"What does it take?" he said. "Now we can say the number of wrongfully convicted men is not 13 but 17. And I would ask, will that be enough?"

Some lawmakers said the governor's actions, particularly if he grants a blanket commutation, could hurt chances for reform.

"If the governor decides to commute all of them, I think reform is dead in its tracks," said state Sen. Peter Roskam (R-Wheaton), the architect of one conservative reform package. "If he does that, the dynamic changes."

DuPage County State's Atty. Joe Birkett also predicted the chances for reform would die because the public would react angrily to any mass commutation.

"A lot of people will be outraged, especially after they look at the facts of these cases," Birkett said Friday. "Most of these cases are not close. In the overwhelming majority, there was no question of guilt."

Ryan singled out Birkett's office for particular criticism. He noted angrily that although former Death Row prisoners Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez have been exonerated of the rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, DuPage prosecutors have "to this day, to this minute" failed to charge Brian Dugan in connection with the case.

Dugan has offered his confession in exchange for being spared the death penalty, and his prosecutors say his DNA connects him Jeanine's murder.

"The governor is obviously not a lawyer, but a pharmacist, not aware of the rules of law," said Birkett. "When I am satisfied that there is enough evidence [against the suspect], I will seek an indictment."

Hours after the speech, Hobley and then Patterson walked out of Pontiac Correctional Center.

Hobley was met by his wife, Kim, a law school graduate who married him while he was on Death Row and had only shared a kiss each time he arrived in the prison visiting room and a kiss when leaving.

She said she knew Hobley had not set the fire that killed seven people, including his wife and infant son.

"When you meet, you know right away this man is innocent," she said. "I believed that God didn't save him from that fire just to kill him."

The release of Orange, convicted in the 1985 stabbing deaths of four people and a fire set to cover up the murders, was delayed two hours in Cook County Jail. He walked into the arms of family shortly after 5 p.m.

Orange's lawyers had faxed the governor's pardon early in the afternoon to the jail, but officials in the sheriff's office said prosecutors had demanded the lawyers produce an original letter with an original signature. Orange was being held in the jail to attend a court hearing on his case.

Patterson, convicted of a 1986 double murder in the South Chicago neighborhood, left prison to cheers from the other men on Death Row and requests that he help bring their cases to the governor's attention.

But before he was free, he was told he would be on supervised release for three years and might even have to spend part of it on home-monitoring.

"They dropped the bombshell on me right before I came out," he said.

Taylor, Patterson's attorney, said he believed Patterson had served his time while on Death Row and should be free and clear of any crimes committed in the past.

Riding in a car with Appolon Beaudouin Jr., an investigator with the State Appellate Defender's Office who has worked on the Patterson case for several years, Patterson said he was stunned that hours earlier he had been on Death Row.

"For the first time," said Patterson, "I think I'm speechless."

Tribune staff reporters Art Barnum, Mickey Ciokajlo, Jeff Coen, Shia Kapos, Maurice Possley, David Mendell and David Heinzmann contributed to this report.

Copyright ? 2003, Chicago Tribune
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Improved archives!

Searching Chicagotribune.com archives back to 1985 is cheaper and easier than ever. New prices for multiple articles can bring your cost as low as 30 cents an article: http://chicagotribune.com/archives

posted by Zentronix @ 9:02 AM 0 comments

0 Comments: