CCJC welcomes commutation of death sentences

Catholic New Times, Feb 9, 2003

OTTAWA (CCN) -- A Canadian church coalition has praised the announcement from Illinois Gov. George Ryan that he is commuting the sentences of all 167 death-row inmates in the state.

"We're elated over news of the commutation," said Rick Prashaw, spokesperson for the Church Council on Justice and Corrections (CCJC), a national coalition of 11 founding churches and organizations. Ryan said in a speech in Chicago Jan. 11, "Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious--and therefore immoral--I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

A day earlier, the governor issued pardons for four death-row inmates who he said were wrongly convicted on the basis of confessions obtained by coercion.

Ryan had placed a moratorium on all executions in the state three years ago after the courts found that 13 death-row inmates were wrongly convicted. That earned him praise from Chicago's Cardinal Francis George, who said in his Lenten message in 2000 that the governor had shown "great courage." The 13 inmates on death row "have gone through their own death and resurrection experiences," George said. "We are called in Illinois, with God's grace, to move beyond vengeance and to end the cycle of violence."

Prashaw said in a CCN interview Jan. 13 that, at one time, Ryan, a Republican, could have been considered the "poster boy" for the death penalty. "Here's a man who was a strong advocate for capital punishment but he allowed the facts to influence him," he said. "He saw some travesties as far as poor legal representation; he saw the predominant black skin of those people on death row; and he saw some obviously wrong convictions. He put under the microscope every single case and he couldn't leave (office) in conscience without making this one of his final acts."

Prashaw said Ryan's commutation along with the moratorium movement in the Jubilee Year 2000 are "two great events that hopefully will move the United States nationally and at the state level at least to the moratorium stage, as people question these executions and then eventually to the abolition side."