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Date Posted: 09:32:47 01/22/03 Wed
Author: NKLS Cody
Subject: Those R great!!!
In reply to: Jay Hovah 's message, "Have you seen these?" on 16:27:13 01/21/03 Tue

As you probably know, he writes just as well as he communicates in the visual medium. There is some info about his book writings after the last article I can find that he wrote.

GEORGE RYAN, AMERICAN HERO

Wed Jan 15,10:03 PM ET
By Ted Rall

A Flawed Politician Makes a Difference

NEW YORK--George Ryan hasn't been much of a governor, but he's one hell of a patriot.

The end of his term finds him facing possible indictment on corruption charges, and his departure brings to an end 30 consecutive years of Republican rule at the Illinois governor's mansion. "If he found Osama bin Laden, it would not be his legacy--it would be the scandal he has endured throughout his entire term as governor," notes Paul Green, professor of public policy at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Nonetheless, Ryan is a case study of principled integrity triumphing over personal and political flaws.

With three days left in office, Governor Ryan delivered the greatest attack on America's death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the practice in 1972. He cleared Illinois' death row on Jan. 11, sending all 167 inmates back to prison, declaring: "Each and every one of those 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."

Because DNA evidence had proven them innocent, Ryan also pardoned four men outright. This brought the total number of death row pardons issued during his term to 17.

Ryan is no bleeding-heart liberal. As a state representative in 1977, Ryan voted to bring back capital punishment. But when he became the state's chief executive, this conservative Republican decided to devote serious attention to the question of government-dealt death. (In contrast to George W. Bush. As governor of Texas, Bush allocated a mere 15 minutes to consider the fate of each inmate, on a work schedule which allotted up to two hours to playing video games. During his tenure Bush issued zero commutations.)

Ryan read studies that found that if you killed someone in rural southern Illinois rather than Chicago, you were five times more likely to fry in Old Sparky. Black murderers got sent to death row more frequently than white murderers.

And those were only the guilty ones.

Many of the people Illinois had convicted of capital crimes were demonstrably innocent--but the state had refused them DNA testing. Anthony Porter, a convicted double murderer freed earlier in Ryan's term, was just 48 hours from meeting his maker when proof of his innocence was brought to light.

Ryan studied the dossiers of the men and women whose lives he held in his hands. What he read appalled him. And so, over the years, Ryan began to change his mind about the death penalty.

Many had been convicted on flimsy evidence--46 of the state's 160 death row inmates were nailed solely based on the secondhand testimony of fellow prisoners. Thirty-five African-Americans had been condemned to death by all-white juries. And poor defendants weren't given much of a chance to defend themselves: "Thirty-free of the death row inmates," Ryan said, "were represented at trial by an attorney who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from the practice of law."

Vern Fueling, whose son William was killed in 1985 by a man now on Illinois' death row, reacted with anger to Ryan's decision. "My son is in the ground for 17 years and justice is not done," Fueling said. He's right--murderers deserve to die.

The problem with capital punishment is that it's carried out by human beings. Juries are biased. Rich defendants buy justice; poor ones buy the farm. Prosecutors showboat to get reelected. Politicians promise stricter sentencing, even if the laws they pass do nothing to reduce crime.

Accidentally executing one innocent man in order to legitimately execute a thousand murderers is one innocent man too many, but the real numbers are much worse. A classic Stanford Law Journal study of 20th century capital cases found 350 innocent people who had been sentenced to death, 23 of whom were executed. Death penalty experts estimate that roughly one in eight men awaiting death have been wrongfully convicted.

Sentencing an innocent person to a jail term is a horrific-enough miscarriage of justice, but such a mistake can--with determination and luck--be corrected. Advocates of capital punishment have yet to explain how to resurrect a person after he's been wrongly executed.

As much as victims like William Fueling deserve to be avenged, the criminal justice system is too inherently flawed, corrupt and inept to do the job dependably. Life in prison will always be the most severe sentence humanity can fairly impose. And even then, the system will always be hobbled by a shortage of inquisitive, principled leaders like George Ryan to set things straight.

(Ted Rall is the author of "Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan," an analysis of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline and the motivations behind the war on terrorism. Editor of "Attitude: The New Subversive Political Cartoonists," an anthology of cartoons, ephemera and interviews with 21 of America's best editorial cartoonists.

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Sorry, Mongo not know he writer as well... -- Jay "Mongo" Hovah, 14:57:06 01/22/03 Wed