Hard calls face Ryan in Death Row review

By Steve Mills and Ken Armstrong
Chicago Tribune March 5, 2002

Gov. George Ryan's pledge to review the cases of all 159 Death Row inmates in Illinois to determine which--if any--sentences to commute promises to be an enormous undertaking fraught with deep problems. As he tries to cull the worthy cases, the only thing Ryan can be certain of is that all of the inmates were convicted and sentenced to die under a system now deemed seriously flawed.

Although Ryan's office said Monday that he has not determined the criteria he will use in evaluating cases, Ryan has often cited incompetent lawyers and jailhouse informants as key problems marring the state's death penalty system. But as the governor sets out to review all the cases, many of them complex and with difficult histories, he will discover that they defy easy categorization.

Deciding who might be innocent is nearly impossible, although a number of inmates have presented strong evidence that they were wrongly convicted. The cases of Anthony Porter, who was cleared only after another man confessed, or Ronald Jones, who was exonerated by DNA, show how the cold record of a case can mask innocence.

Nationally, governors have often used their power to commute death sentences in cases where inmates produced compelling evidence of mental retardation, mental illness or that they were products of deprived or abusive upbringings. But determining who is mentally retarded or mentally ill is difficult as well; those cases often are vigorously disputed, with competing medical experts and tests.

In Illinois, dozens of Death Row inmates have claimed that they are mentally ill or mentally retarded. Others have offered evidence that they were routinely abused as children. It is undisputed that some defendants had trials undermined by poor defense work or the testimony of a jailhouse snitch. But identifying those cases, and then trying to understand how that might have affected a trial and, perhaps, obscured a defendant's innocence, is tricky.

"The thing to remember is this--when Anthony Porter was about to be killed, no one thought that was a case that raised any questions of factual innocence. ... And lo and behold, it turns out we couldn't have been more wrong," said Northwestern University law school professor Lawrence Marshall. "When you have bad lawyering or you have no investigations, how can you look at a record and say you know a guy is guilty."

Blanket commutation possible

Ryan also has said that he is open to a blanket commutation that would spare all 159 inmates on Death Row, although that would allow some of the state's most heinous murderers to escape the ultimate punishment.

But that would address the fact that one of the most significant reforms of the state's death penalty system, the Illinois Supreme Court's capital litigation bar, which created minimum standards for defense lawyers and prosecutors, only went into effect Friday. Few on Death Row have benefited from any of the state's reforms.

According to a Tribune analysis of the cases, at least 14 of the 159 inmates on Death Row were represented at trial by attorneys who have, at some point, been disbarred or suspended. They include such inmates as Edward Tenney, who was convicted in Kane County of murdering a 76-year-old woman. Tenney's attorney had gotten his law license back after a suspension just 10 days before being appointed to Tenney's case.

That number, however, fails to account for such inmates as Tuhran Lear, who was convicted of the 1988 murder of a gas station manager. Lear's attorney was only two years out of law school when he tried the case. Jeffrey Rissley, another Death Row inmate, was represented by a probate and real estate attorney. Rissley was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of a 6-year-old girl. Several other Death Row inmates were represented by attorneys whose handling of other capital cases has been labeled incompetent by appeals courts.

At least 23 inmates were convicted or condemned at trials where the prosecution's evidence included a jailhouse informant, a notoriously unreliable form of evidence.
Ryan also, at times, said he is bothered by cases in which African-American defendants were convicted or condemned by all-white juries. Of the 159 Death Row inmates, at least 16 fall into that category.

And nearly a dozen cases were investigated by Chicago police detectives accused of systematically torturing suspects to get confessions.
Those detectives worked under former Cmdr. Jon Burge, who was fired in 1993 by the Chicago Police Board for the torture of Andrew Wilson, a man accused, and eventually convicted, of murdering two police officers.

Ryan also will confront cases where defendants were convicted during trials riddled with errors.

Given the great difficulties in trying to extract those inmates most worthy of being spared, Ryan may well turn to a blanket commutation.

A blanket commutation would be the executive equivalent of what two Illinois Supreme Court justices have called for. In death penalty rulings issued in September, Chief Justice Moses Harrison II and Justice Thomas Kilbride argued that every death sentence tried under the state's old rules should be invalidated. Harrison wrote that, "in many cases under the old law, there was no longer even a pretense of fairness or accuracy."

Political fallout likely

But such a sweeping commutation presents its own set of problems. Although Ryan, who is not running for re-election, would not have to worry about any fallout politically, such a move still is likely to cause an outcry, said state Sen. Kirk Dillard (R-Hinsdale).

Among the inmates currently on Death Row are such infamous killers as I-57 murderer Henry Brisbon, and Fedell Caffey and Jacqueline Williams, who were convicted of murdering a pregnant woman and carving the fetus out of her womb. A sweeping commutation would include Timothy Buss, convicted of the 1995 murder of a 10-year-old he stabbed 50 times. Buss previously was convicted of killing another child.
At least two cases present personal challenges for Ryan. Danny Edwards was convicted of the 1987 murder of Ryan's former neighbor in Kankakee Stephen B. Small. Edward Spreitzer was convicted, along with Andrew Kokoraleis, of gruesome murders in DuPage County.

In 1999 Ryan allowed Kokoraleis' execution after what he said was much agonizing--the only execution during his tenure as governor. A blanket commutation would mean Spreitzer would receive a form of mercy that Ryan denied Kokoraleis.

Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune