"There is more to us than the worst thing we have done.''

On January 10th, 2003, Governor George Ryan pardoned four men from Illinois' death row. This makes 17 men who had been sentenced to die for crimes they did not commit, exonerated after years of wrongful imprisonment. The next day, Governor Ryan, historically a proponent of capital punishment, commuted 167 death sentences to life without parole. When announcing the pardons, Ryan called the criminal justice system under which these men and women were sentenced to die "deeply flawed," "arbitrary," and "haunted by the demon of error."*

On this web site you will be introduced to some of the people who have lived on Illinois' death row.12 have been executed. A few have died while on death row. 167 have had their sentences commuted. 17 have been exonerated.

Some who have not been exonerated are innocent; most are not. You will see some who are remorseful and some who are not. Some have become artists and writers in their time behind bars. Some have become students of the law, trying desperately to restore their honor by proving their innocence. We hope that you will see from their own words that all are and were human beings like you and me, capable of both good and evil.

Every time we, the people of Illinois, kill, we destroy the life of a creative, thinking being. We remove the possibility of a human being finding his or her way to remorse and redemption. And we, as a society, take the chance of putting an innocent person to death.

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*While we are grateful to Governor Ryan for making these courageous decisions, our gratitude is overshadowed by the prosecutors' efforts to continue seeking death sentences despite the proven unfairness of the death penalty in Illinois. Instead of trying to find ways to fix this broken system, the prosecutors deny their role in this melee and vow vengeance. The death penalty in Illinois is still in operation. We still have much work to do.

Click on The Prisoners for snapshots of some of the people who are on Illinois' Death Row,
and the men who used to be on Death Row.

The Prisoners

Life on the Condemned Unit (stay tuned--page under construction)

Visit a Prisoner on Death Row

Write to a Prisoner on Death Row