ARE WE GOING TO CHEAT ONCE AGAIN?
Can we really be happy about the moratorium on death penalty executions imposed in Illinois by Governor George Ryan? What is all that about--the end of the death penalty in Illinois? No, we can't be happy. Not at all! Governor Ryan, a moderate Republican, favors the death penalty. He was forced to decide on a moratorium when he realized that for 12 executions in his state, 13 people had been released from death row. Those 13 innocent men had to endure the inhumane conditions of death row, and some of them came very close to being legally murdered. That was difficult to approve of, even for a Republican favoring the death penalty. Governor Ryan even characterized these executions as "shameful"-a euphemism when you think about what these 13 men felt when they nearly got murdered for a crime they hadn't committed!
In the US, 85 death-row prisoners have been freed since the end of the first moratorium in 1976. Can we also describe as "shameful" the executions that actually put to death innocent people--killed for a crime they never committed? Murdered after years of inhumane incarceration and years of hope that they wouldn't die strapped onto a gurney or into an electric chair?
Some might be surprised that a Republican can impose such a moratorium. The Republican Party is not famous for a soft heart on that topic. That's exactly the trap. This moratorium is nothing but a stay in the pace of executions, a way to impose a new legitimacy to start them again with a good conscience. Justice will be even "better" than before, and who would dare to say anything against that? Who would dare complain if the appeals process had to be speeded up? Who would dare oppose shortening the time between sentencing and execution for economic reasons?
Think what would have happened to Anthony Porter if such laws had been working when he was on death row. He was recently freed after spending 16 years there. Was he cleared by the state? No! He was cleared by a team of undergraduate journalism students at Northwestern University, who took on his case as a class project. That was what got him out.
When this moratorium is lifted, the people executed will be de facto obviously guilty. The 1972 -1976 moratorium, which was so full of hope for the people opposed to this barbaric punishment, was just a way to make people believe there would not be any more racial bias. (How wrong they have been!) When it was lifted, executions started again, and we know at what pace they are going now. It will be just the same when the Illinois Governor is convinced that the death penalty is once again "safe" in his state. Wearing his good conscience, he will start the killing machine again.
Should we remember that in Florida, governed by Jeb, another one of the Bush dynasty, 20 prisoners have been freed after having been recognized innocent of the crime that nearly killed them? Should David Wayne Spence have been executed in Texas in 1997? He was almost certainly innocent. The detective who investigated the triple murder for which Spence was executed declared, "Nothing from the investigation ever led us to any evidence that he was involved."
Clearly, the death penalty is not only useless, not only not a deterrent, but, on the contrary, is full of risk, full of danger. It is not a moratorium that is needed. It is the end of capital punishment that is needed--the only way to be sure that no one will ever be executed wrongfully again, that innocent people will not be killed in our name. There is no other way to erase the risk. No governor--Republican or Democrat--well intentioned or looking for publicity--can prove that human justice is never mistaken.
Let us look back, learn some lessons from the past. Even if this moratorium seems to be the first ray of hope through all these years, don't let them cheat us! It is only an illusion that will make reality harder to endure. It is nothing else but a wide trap. It is the death penalty that has to be killed.