jim writes ""Governor Ryan's Song"

Mumia Abu-Jamal

Gov. George Ryan, in the last passing days of his first and only
term, saved the best for last.

He sent shock waves across the nation when he issued four pardons to
men sitting on the Condemned Units of the state's prison system,
opening the doors of the dungeon for four men, one who sat in the
shadow of the gallows for nearly two decades. Speaking in a soft,
Midwestern accent, his words were as damning as the death sentences
that his orders negated: "The system is broken."

With these orders, he ushered four men, Stanley Howard, Madison
Hobley, Aaron Patterson, and Leroy Orange, from the darkest corners
of the land, into the light. Quoting a tale of that famed
Illinoisan, Lincoln, he recalled the job of the nation's chief
executive, who, reviewing execution orders for those who were
convicted of violating the military code during the Civil War, asked
one of his generals why one young man had no letters in his file from
any who wished his life spared. The General, shrugging his shoulders
matter-of-factly, said, "He's got no friends." Lincoln, lifting his
pen, remarked, "He's got one friend," and pardoned the man from the
clutches of the hangman. Ryan said those four denizens of Death Row,
each having been subjected to police torture, falsified confessions,
prosecutorial misconduct, and judicial blindness to these vile
transgressions, had one friend, and decided to cut the Gordian knot,
by issuing full pardons to the four, and proving a friend to men who
had few real friends in the dark, deserted abode of death. Before
day's end, three of the four walked away from the closed cell of
state repression, into the fresh air of a windy Chicago, and freedom.

By so doing, Ryan has dealt a serious, crippling blow to the state
system of death, and the inability of the dignitaries and officials
of the system, to cure the serious problems of the death penalty,
were shown in sharp and stark relief.

It is fitting that Ryan, a one-term, embattled politico, and a
non-lawyer ("I'm a pharmacist", he repeatedly explained) would be the
one to solve these deep and troubling problems. It is equally as
fitting that the problems of the Illinois death system came to light,
not through the members of the Bar, but through the meanderings of
students of journalism, whose investigations led to the ultimate
conclusion voiced by Ryan some years later: "The system is broken."

Hours after his unprecedented announcement of the pardon package,
Ryan's office would announce another earth-shattering event: the full
commutation of every man on Death Row in the Prairie State. By the
end of the week, 167 folks would no longer be on Death Row.

Elected as a conservative Republican who "never gave a moment's
thought" to the rightness or morality of the death penalty, Ryan
would be the last politician one would expect would strike down the
nation's 7th largest Death Row in the United States.

With a hoarse voice, his nervousness evident by his fidgety
presentation, the one-term governor struck a mighty blow against the
Death System in America.

Exercising a breadth of vision that is truly remarkable in an
American sitting (albeit departing) politician, Ryan spoke of the
problems facing not just those condemned to death, but in the
processes, prosecutions, and judgments affecting those condemned to
'life'. His words were a rare gubernatorial recognition of the
deficits in the system entire: "The system has proven itself to be
wildly inaccurate, unjust, unable to separate the innocent from the
guilty... and racist."

His commutations of over 150 death sentences, unquestionably stays
the cold hand of death, but it does not address the injustices that
led many to Death Row, nor keeps them confined on 'Life Row', for
those problems, those deep cracks in the system, remain.

It is tragically true that, as Ryan charges, "The system is broken."
The bitter truth is his efforts, while undeniably noble, and
unquestionably historic, does not fix the mess.

To his credit, Ryan assembled a blue-ribbon panel to examine the
state's death system, and the commission, after three years, came to
a political, yet systematic, conclusion: 'The system is broken.' The
commission, composed of prosecutors, judges, defense lawyers and
scholars, joined in the report, and issued some 85 recommendations to
'fix' the system, including the recording of confessions, from
beginning to end, the end of 'jailhouse confessions', (which are
notoriously unreliable, yet influential to unknowing jurors), and a
host of others. The legislature opted to ignore the recommendations,
just as the state's highest judiciary chose to ignore many of the
most blatant injustices, and Ryan, the 'non-lawyer', felt compelled
to act.

If the system is broken, how can the system fix the system?

Ryan's very extraordinary act, seems to suggest, that it cannot.
For while those 4 men are free of unjust convictions, are they the
*only* four innocents on the state's large Death Row, or larger Life
Row? That seems unlikely.

In another sense, as the underlying system remains tightly embedded
in place, what of those to come? How many years will other innocents
suffer in the suffocating holds of steel and brick slave ships
(prisons) before another scandal threatens the stability of the
system?

Like the notorious cycle of police corruption cases that plagues
U.S. cities, like New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and -yes-
Chicago, the problem isn't fixed, but passed on to later
administrations.

It seems an abolition movement must take this, not as a final
victory, but as a first step of a systematic battle for real change.

We may all agree that the system is broken. But that mere agreement
does not insure that that which is broken will indeed be fixed.

Copyright 2003 Mumia Abu-Jamal"