In the aftermath of the clemency hearings, the Chicago Tribune published a particularly acerbic editorial that said, in part:
The hurry-up clemency hearings that were supposed to highlight flaws in this state’s capital punishment system instead have drenched Illinois citizens in vivid, painful reminders of why the death penalty exists. As a result, Governor George Ryan’s threat to unilaterally commute all current death sentences has backfired in his face and undermined the crucial cause of capital punishment reform.
This prompted a joint response from the Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation. On December 15, they held a “National Gathering of the Death Row Exonerated” at Northwestern University. This was supposed to have been held the following year to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the National Conference on Wrongful Convictions and the Death Penalty that Larry Marshall had first organized in the fall of 1998. But it was moved up and was a direct appeal to me, although I was not there.
This time, thirty-six men who had been exonerated from death row across the country walked onto a stage at Northwestern University’s Law School. One by one, they introduced themselves and lit a candle. The flames were intended to represent the lives that would have been snuffed out had their executions taken place. This group of exonerated death row prisoners was even larger than the group Marshall brought together the first time he convened such a conference.
Marshall said, “Governor, we urge you to side on the side of life.”
Reverend Jesse Jackson was there as well. He was a long-time friend and a strong proponent of abolishing the death penalty across the country. He and I had always been able to work together on issues that were important to his community. I appreciated his promise to support me at a time when I was getting as much criticism as I was praise.
He spoke as if he were talking directly to me.
“You can make a decision that will change the course of a nation,” he said. “In truth, the nation’s soul is on trial.”
This was the beginning of perhaps the most intense lobbying effort by the antideath penalty movement to date.
The following day, at 4:40 a.m., a most unusual public demonstration began on the shoulder of Illinois State Highway 53. Exonerated death row inmate Gary Gauger pointed across the street to the Stateville Correctional Center, the institution which—until the execution of Andrew Kokoraleis—had housed the Illinois death chamber. It was where Gauger, had he not been exonerated, would have been put to death by lethal injection.
“Look at it,” Gauger declared, gesturing toward the prison with its circular towers that housed inmates. “That place really is Gothic, like something out of a Batman movie. Unreal.”
And then, as a handful of reporters watched, Gauger, accompanied by his wife, Sue, and Larry Marshall, stepped off on the first lap of what was to be a thirty-seven-mile relay of exonerated men. They were carrying a scroll to deliver to my office at the Thompson Center in downtown Chicago.
This appeal was called “Dead Men Walking.”
“We are the exonerated,” the scroll said. “We have each walked in the valley of the shadow of death. The courts and the public were certain that we were guilty and that we had forfeited our right to live. Only through miracles did the truth emerge. The truth proved we were victims of wrongful convictions.”
The men exchanged the scroll like a baton. Some held it aloft like an Olympic torch. Some were clad in sweatpants, others in suits and ties. There were vans following the men, carrying those who would drop in for their leg and picking up those who completed theirs.
About ten miles from downtown, men stopped leaving. As new men joined, the group grew in size. At the Cook County Criminal Courts building at 26th Street and California Boulevard, where many of these exonerated men had been housed and tried and convicted, they paused. It was later reported to me that Perry Cobb, who was exonerated with his codefendant Darby Tillis in 1987, pulled a harmonica out of his pocket and played “Amazing Grace.” And they all sang. It was spontaneous. There was no media to impress. They later said the moment was cathartic and powerful.
Anthony Porter and David Protess led the last leg. The group, which included Maria Cunningham, whose husband Dick had been so tragically stabbed to death, as well as about a dozen exonerees and supporters, marched over the Chicago River and up to the Thompson building. There, a member of my staff accepted the scroll and promised to deliver it to me. He reiterated that blanket commutation was on the “back burner.” He also added, however, that I had been “reviewing each of these cases for three years.”
That night, I attended the Chicago premier of the play The Exonerated, a ninety-minute dramatization of the stories of several death row exonerees with actors, including Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, Mike Farrell, and Danny Glover portraying the exonerees. It was staged at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, which was at full capacity when Lura Lynn and I entered. The play, created by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, had been running Off-Broadway for about two years in New York City and this was the first performance elsewhere. Rob Warden had been instrumental in bringing the play to Chicago and some of the actors had volunteered to take part specifically because the performance essentially was for me. It was a one-night stand.
The audience included death row exonerees from around the country, including five of the six exonerees featured in the play, members of the Illinois legislature, as well as lawyers and advocates for abolishing the death penalty and for fixing the criminal justice system. Larry Marshall and Rob Warden were there, of course, as was Barry Scheck, who along with Peter Neufeld had cofounded the Innocence Project in New York City that was exonerating inmates through the use of DNA testing.
As Lura Lynn and I watched the play, about half, if not most of the audience, was watching me to try to discern some small piece of intelligence about what I was thinking. In a way, I was an audience of one on this night.
It was a powerful performance and provided an emotional and visceral dimension for me. At the conclusion, the actors joined to thank me for declaring the moratorium. The auditorium exploded in a standing ovation that left me trembling in my seat.
Never, in my thirty years in politics, had I never received a standing ovation such as that for a single decision.
I stepped up toward the front of the stage and shook hands with the actors, including Dreyfus, who was holding the letter that the inmates had carried from Stateville penitentiary to my office downtown. He handed it to me and said, “In an era when we have come to expect so little from our elected officials, you gave us more, much more.”
Before I left, Robin Hobley, sister of death row inmate Madison Hobley, approached.
“Governor Ryan,” she said. “When are you going to meet with family members of the people on death row? You met with the families of victims. We have things to say too.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“I will,” I told her. “I will do it. We will set it up.”
As I left the theater, I felt as I had been socked in the gut. And although I didn’t say it, I felt that blanket commutation was back on the table.
Not long after, I spent the afternoon with the family members of the death row inmates at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chicago. After having listened to the victims’ families, now I heard about a different kind of pain.
Many of these families lived with the twin agony of knowing that, in some cases, their family member was responsible for causing another family great pain, and that society was calling for a second killing—of their family member. Those parents, brothers, sisters, and children were not to blame for the crimes that were committed, yet they faced the realization that the state wanted to execute their sons or brothers or fathers.
It was evident that some of these family members were even more tormented by their belief that their loved one was really a victim—someone who they knew was truly innocent of the crime that sent them to death row.
At this meeting I looked into the face of Claude Lee, the adoptive father of Eric Lee, who was convicted of killing a Kankakee police officer in 1996 and was sitting on death row. Eric Lee had no criminal record but did have a history of mental illness when Officer Anthony Samfay pulled him over for a traffic violation. Evidence would later show that in the months prior to this confrontation, Lee had been diagnosed as being “dangerous” and “in need of a structured environment,” but had not received any further psychiatric care.
Lee shot Samfay several times and fled. He later forced a woman to give up her car keys by displaying a pistol. He was caught driving the woman’s car about an hour later. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. It had been a traumatic time in Kankakee.
I knew Claude Lee. We went to high school together. At the time, his home, on Myrtle Street, was about a mile from my home. I had known the Lee family for many years.
Lee approached me and we shook hands and he got right to the point.
“Are you going to kill my son?” he asked.
How do you respond to a question like that?
I said I was thinking long and hard about what to do and that I would be thinking of him and his family and his son.
We shook hands again and he walked away.
I was familiar with the case. While there was little doubt that Eric was guilty of killing the officer, our review determined there was no question that Eric was, at the time of the crime, seriously mentally ill and had been for many years. The crime he committed was terrible. He killed a police officer.
But already I had found myself questioning whether I could send another man’s son to death under a deeply flawed capital punishment system like the one in Illinois. This was a deeply troubled young man with a documented history of mental illness. Could I rely on the system of justice in Illinois to not make a horrible mistake with a young man who was mentally unstable? Should this man be executed by the state?
Meeting with family members of the condemned was just as difficult as the meetings I had with the victims’ families. It was no less emotional and they were just as honest as the families in the other meetings had been. I took my time and tried to answer all their questions. For a while, I sat in a chair and bounced young children on my knee. I later found out that among them were the grandchildren of Henry Brisbon, the man some said was a poster child for the death penalty. They didn’t ask me if I was going to kill their grandfather, but they might as well have.
In the end, all these families—the families of the victims and the families of the condemned—were in their own way asking me not to destroy their belief in justice.
I didn’t see how I could please both sides.