jbmccormick
09-26-2002, 09:32 AM
I received this article through the Yahoo group TIFATALK. I remember hearing a few people discuss this here and I THINK this is about Illinois (just scanned the article).
Jim
This article from NYTimes.com
Governor Ryan is rumored to be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the death penalty!
G.O.P. Death-Penalty Feud Sinks to First-Name Calling
September 26, 2002
By JODI WILGOREN
CHICAGO, Sept. 25 - Case No. 94776 before the Illinois
Supreme Court is known as Ryan v. Ryan.
Attorney General Jim Ryan filed the lawsuit against Gov.
George Ryan to halt an unprecedented series of clemency
hearings next month for every inmate on death row. Governor
Ryan, who is leaving office under a shroud of scandal yet
is rumored to be a Nobel peace prize nominee for his
efforts to reform capital punishment, has signaled that the
hearings may spare the lives of many, or even all, of the
158 condemned prisoners.
But the attorney general's lawsuit is more than legal
wrangling over the death penalty. It exemplifies the
bizarre state of politics here, in which Jim Ryan, the
Republican nominee for governor, is battling George Ryan,
the Republican incumbent, as much as his Democratic
opponent. Confusion over the two Ryans, who are not related
and have never been close, along with other internal
dysfunctions, leave the Republican Party in danger of
losing a governorship it has occupied for 26 years.
"I don't think there's ever been an election as goofy as
this one," said Paul Green, a professor at Roosevelt
University who is an expert on Illinois campaigns dating to
1818. "The real excitement, the real tension, hasn't been
between Democrats and Republicans, it's been between
Republicans."
Polls show Jim Ryan trailing the Democratic nominee,
Representative Rod R. Blagojevich of Chicago, by at least
11 points, but suggest that lead is cut in half once voters
are told candidate Ryan is not incumbent Ryan. The
governor's term was tarnished by revelations that contracts
and driver's licenses were traded for campaign
contributions under his watch as secretary of state.
To clarify that the Republican Ryans are not one person,
Jim Ryan's campaign has asked newspapers to use first
initials in headlines and employs a logo where the
candidate's first name is much larger than his last.
"There are names in Illinois politics that have been big
pluses," said Gary E. MacDougal, who became chairman of the
state Republican Party this summer when his predecessor was
tainted by the mounting scandal in the bribery
investigation. "This one turned on him with a vengeance."
Not satisfied just to distinguish himself from his boss,
Jim Ryan suggested this summer that George Ryan explain his
role in the swirling scandal or step down, and, more
recently, declared that the governor "ran the worst
administration in the history of Illinois."
The governor responded by calling his fellow Republican "a
lousy candidate."
Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-a-vich) exploits the
enmity in a new television ad that notes the feud but binds
the two men as partners in a corrupt administration with
side-by-side head shots.
"All voters see is two guys named Ryan who are bickering
over who screwed up the state worse," said Pete Giangreco,
a consultant to the Blagojevich campaign. "The voters are
smart enough to know that these are two different guys who
come from the same system, one guy who creates the scandal
and one guy who looks the other way."
The months of sniping have now been elevated to a courtroom
brawl.
In twin lawsuits filed last week, the attorney general
contends that the clemency hearings are illegal because
each case is allocated just 15 minutes per side, and
because about 30 of the prisoners have not requested
hearings or are not currently facing executions because
their cases are being retried. Victims' advocates and local
prosecutors say the back-to-back-to-back hearings scheduled
before the Prisoner Review Board for four days in October
are a sham. They also worry that Governor Ryan, who halted
executions in 2000 and has since pushed an overhaul of the
capital punishment system, plans to empty death row before
he departs in January.
"The governor's obligation is to look at each case," said
Richard Devine, the state's attorney for Cook County. "To
lump everything together and say the system is broken is
false and outrageous. It's a disservice to the criminal
justice system. It's a slap in the face to the families of
victims."
But Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University, said the short
hearings should suffice, because the main argument for
clemency is that the capital punishment system is flawed
and unfair. Since Illinois re-established the death penalty
in 1977, 12 people have been executed and 13 have been
exonerated; a governor's commission in April said 85 major
reforms were essential to make the system just.
"All of these people, 100 percent of them, were convicted
and sentenced to death under a system that is generally
acknowledged to be grossly dysfunctional," Mr. Warden said.
"We know there are some innocent people remaining under
death sentence in Illinois; we're just not sure which ones
they are. The intelligent thing to do is let's just stop
using this broken system."
In any case, Kenneth Tupy, counsel for the review board,
said Jim Ryan's lawsuits were moot because the board
planned to extend the 15-minute guideline when warranted
and would not conduct hearings for those who did not
request them (though Governor Ryan does plan to consider
commutations in those cases).
In an interview this week, Governor Ryan said that he has
begun thumbing through the nine four-inch binders detailing
the stories of the 154 men and 4 women on death row, and
that he plans to sit in on some of the hearings. He said
prisoners who qualify as mentally retarded would almost
definitely be spared. He added that others who would not be
eligible for execution under the reforms he is advocating -
those who were sentenced based on the testimony of a
jailhouse snitch or an accomplice, for example - would
probably have their sentences commuted to life in prison.
"That's what I'm going to be looking for, was anybody
abused by the system," he explained. "This isn't a matter
of the severity of the crimes; most of the crimes are
horrendous. The point is, are the people who are there
guilty, and did they get a fair trial?
The 14-member Prisoner Review Board plans to submit
recommendations to the governor for each case it considers
by mid-November. But state law allows the governor to
change sentences from death to life regardless of the
recommendations, or even without the hearings.
Relatives of victims, 100 of whom gathered last week to
meet with prosecutors and plan their presentations, are
devastated at the prospect of mass commutations.
"How can he make a decision that's so important when he
hasn't been through a situation?" asked U'Rica Winder, who
survived being stabbed 48 times, at age 6, when her mother,
sister and two others were killed in their apartment in a
Chicago housing project in 1986. "I know who killed my
family. I was there.
"When something has flaws, you don't outlaw it," Ms. Winder
added. "What you do is you see what's the problem."
Dawn Pueschel, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed
19 years ago, said the timing of the clemency hearings was
suspicious.
"I think he's trying to take away from everything that's
happened in his office in the last four years," Ms.
Pueschel said of the governor. "He's going out and he wants
to make a name for himself. This is at the expense of the
victims and all the victims' families."
Governor Ryan, who decided in August 2001 not to see
re-election as his approval rates plummeted because of the
bribery investigation, denies he is trying to use
commutations to help his legacy. Jim Ryan, who, like Mr.
Blagojevich, did not make himself available over several
days for an interview, has said that the lawsuits had
nothing to do with the campaign.
Wading into the death penalty may be a risky move for the
Republican candidate: as a prosecutor, Jim Ryan
aggressively pursued a defendant who was later exonerated
by DNA evidence, something Mr. Blagojevich has already
brought up in the campaign. Mr. Blagojevich and his
opponent support the death penalty but say they would
extend Governor Ryan's moratorium on executions until flaws
in the system have been fixed.
Their positions are in sharp contrast to Governor Ryan, who
has made concern over capital punishment a signature issue.
Independent analysts and Republicans not involved with the
campaign said Jim Ryan has problems beyond a muddled
identity. Though Republicans typically outspend Democrats
by as much as 3 to 1 in statewide races here, Mr.
Blagojevich has far more cash and has had television
advertisements up for more than a month, while the
Republican started a statewide blitz just last week. After
emerging as a decisive winner in the Republican primary in
the spring, Mr. Ryan has failed to outline a concise
agenda, experts say.
"If you ask anybody what they think is his vision for the
future of Illinois," said John Callaway, a longtime public
television commentator in Chicago, "I don't think they'd
know."
Bill Atwood, a Republican strategist based in Chicago, said
Mr. Ryan "lacks sharpness and he also lacks volume,"
because of the shortage of campaign contributions. Dick
Simpson, a professor of political science at the University
of Illinois-Chicago, said he has "seen better campaigns run
for dogcatcher, and we don't run for dogcatcher here."
The campaign's request that newspapers find ways of
distinguishing the candidates, at least, has had some
effect. A headline last week in The Daily Southtown, a
suburban Chicago paper, said, "Jim Ryan sues to halt
clemency hearings," and an editorial in the State
Journal-Register of Springfield this month was labeled,
"Voters no longer consider J. Ryan to be above the fray."
But there may be more work to do: The Rockford
Register-Star recently announced that George Ryan would
meet Mr. Blagojevich for the first of four governor's
debates on Oct. 7.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/national/26ILLI.html?ex=1034048245&ei=1&en=21f5696b5fec0b12
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Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
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Jim
This article from NYTimes.com
Governor Ryan is rumored to be a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the death penalty!
G.O.P. Death-Penalty Feud Sinks to First-Name Calling
September 26, 2002
By JODI WILGOREN
CHICAGO, Sept. 25 - Case No. 94776 before the Illinois
Supreme Court is known as Ryan v. Ryan.
Attorney General Jim Ryan filed the lawsuit against Gov.
George Ryan to halt an unprecedented series of clemency
hearings next month for every inmate on death row. Governor
Ryan, who is leaving office under a shroud of scandal yet
is rumored to be a Nobel peace prize nominee for his
efforts to reform capital punishment, has signaled that the
hearings may spare the lives of many, or even all, of the
158 condemned prisoners.
But the attorney general's lawsuit is more than legal
wrangling over the death penalty. It exemplifies the
bizarre state of politics here, in which Jim Ryan, the
Republican nominee for governor, is battling George Ryan,
the Republican incumbent, as much as his Democratic
opponent. Confusion over the two Ryans, who are not related
and have never been close, along with other internal
dysfunctions, leave the Republican Party in danger of
losing a governorship it has occupied for 26 years.
"I don't think there's ever been an election as goofy as
this one," said Paul Green, a professor at Roosevelt
University who is an expert on Illinois campaigns dating to
1818. "The real excitement, the real tension, hasn't been
between Democrats and Republicans, it's been between
Republicans."
Polls show Jim Ryan trailing the Democratic nominee,
Representative Rod R. Blagojevich of Chicago, by at least
11 points, but suggest that lead is cut in half once voters
are told candidate Ryan is not incumbent Ryan. The
governor's term was tarnished by revelations that contracts
and driver's licenses were traded for campaign
contributions under his watch as secretary of state.
To clarify that the Republican Ryans are not one person,
Jim Ryan's campaign has asked newspapers to use first
initials in headlines and employs a logo where the
candidate's first name is much larger than his last.
"There are names in Illinois politics that have been big
pluses," said Gary E. MacDougal, who became chairman of the
state Republican Party this summer when his predecessor was
tainted by the mounting scandal in the bribery
investigation. "This one turned on him with a vengeance."
Not satisfied just to distinguish himself from his boss,
Jim Ryan suggested this summer that George Ryan explain his
role in the swirling scandal or step down, and, more
recently, declared that the governor "ran the worst
administration in the history of Illinois."
The governor responded by calling his fellow Republican "a
lousy candidate."
Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-a-vich) exploits the
enmity in a new television ad that notes the feud but binds
the two men as partners in a corrupt administration with
side-by-side head shots.
"All voters see is two guys named Ryan who are bickering
over who screwed up the state worse," said Pete Giangreco,
a consultant to the Blagojevich campaign. "The voters are
smart enough to know that these are two different guys who
come from the same system, one guy who creates the scandal
and one guy who looks the other way."
The months of sniping have now been elevated to a courtroom
brawl.
In twin lawsuits filed last week, the attorney general
contends that the clemency hearings are illegal because
each case is allocated just 15 minutes per side, and
because about 30 of the prisoners have not requested
hearings or are not currently facing executions because
their cases are being retried. Victims' advocates and local
prosecutors say the back-to-back-to-back hearings scheduled
before the Prisoner Review Board for four days in October
are a sham. They also worry that Governor Ryan, who halted
executions in 2000 and has since pushed an overhaul of the
capital punishment system, plans to empty death row before
he departs in January.
"The governor's obligation is to look at each case," said
Richard Devine, the state's attorney for Cook County. "To
lump everything together and say the system is broken is
false and outrageous. It's a disservice to the criminal
justice system. It's a slap in the face to the families of
victims."
But Rob Warden, director of the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University, said the short
hearings should suffice, because the main argument for
clemency is that the capital punishment system is flawed
and unfair. Since Illinois re-established the death penalty
in 1977, 12 people have been executed and 13 have been
exonerated; a governor's commission in April said 85 major
reforms were essential to make the system just.
"All of these people, 100 percent of them, were convicted
and sentenced to death under a system that is generally
acknowledged to be grossly dysfunctional," Mr. Warden said.
"We know there are some innocent people remaining under
death sentence in Illinois; we're just not sure which ones
they are. The intelligent thing to do is let's just stop
using this broken system."
In any case, Kenneth Tupy, counsel for the review board,
said Jim Ryan's lawsuits were moot because the board
planned to extend the 15-minute guideline when warranted
and would not conduct hearings for those who did not
request them (though Governor Ryan does plan to consider
commutations in those cases).
In an interview this week, Governor Ryan said that he has
begun thumbing through the nine four-inch binders detailing
the stories of the 154 men and 4 women on death row, and
that he plans to sit in on some of the hearings. He said
prisoners who qualify as mentally retarded would almost
definitely be spared. He added that others who would not be
eligible for execution under the reforms he is advocating -
those who were sentenced based on the testimony of a
jailhouse snitch or an accomplice, for example - would
probably have their sentences commuted to life in prison.
"That's what I'm going to be looking for, was anybody
abused by the system," he explained. "This isn't a matter
of the severity of the crimes; most of the crimes are
horrendous. The point is, are the people who are there
guilty, and did they get a fair trial?
The 14-member Prisoner Review Board plans to submit
recommendations to the governor for each case it considers
by mid-November. But state law allows the governor to
change sentences from death to life regardless of the
recommendations, or even without the hearings.
Relatives of victims, 100 of whom gathered last week to
meet with prosecutors and plan their presentations, are
devastated at the prospect of mass commutations.
"How can he make a decision that's so important when he
hasn't been through a situation?" asked U'Rica Winder, who
survived being stabbed 48 times, at age 6, when her mother,
sister and two others were killed in their apartment in a
Chicago housing project in 1986. "I know who killed my
family. I was there.
"When something has flaws, you don't outlaw it," Ms. Winder
added. "What you do is you see what's the problem."
Dawn Pueschel, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed
19 years ago, said the timing of the clemency hearings was
suspicious.
"I think he's trying to take away from everything that's
happened in his office in the last four years," Ms.
Pueschel said of the governor. "He's going out and he wants
to make a name for himself. This is at the expense of the
victims and all the victims' families."
Governor Ryan, who decided in August 2001 not to see
re-election as his approval rates plummeted because of the
bribery investigation, denies he is trying to use
commutations to help his legacy. Jim Ryan, who, like Mr.
Blagojevich, did not make himself available over several
days for an interview, has said that the lawsuits had
nothing to do with the campaign.
Wading into the death penalty may be a risky move for the
Republican candidate: as a prosecutor, Jim Ryan
aggressively pursued a defendant who was later exonerated
by DNA evidence, something Mr. Blagojevich has already
brought up in the campaign. Mr. Blagojevich and his
opponent support the death penalty but say they would
extend Governor Ryan's moratorium on executions until flaws
in the system have been fixed.
Their positions are in sharp contrast to Governor Ryan, who
has made concern over capital punishment a signature issue.
Independent analysts and Republicans not involved with the
campaign said Jim Ryan has problems beyond a muddled
identity. Though Republicans typically outspend Democrats
by as much as 3 to 1 in statewide races here, Mr.
Blagojevich has far more cash and has had television
advertisements up for more than a month, while the
Republican started a statewide blitz just last week. After
emerging as a decisive winner in the Republican primary in
the spring, Mr. Ryan has failed to outline a concise
agenda, experts say.
"If you ask anybody what they think is his vision for the
future of Illinois," said John Callaway, a longtime public
television commentator in Chicago, "I don't think they'd
know."
Bill Atwood, a Republican strategist based in Chicago, said
Mr. Ryan "lacks sharpness and he also lacks volume,"
because of the shortage of campaign contributions. Dick
Simpson, a professor of political science at the University
of Illinois-Chicago, said he has "seen better campaigns run
for dogcatcher, and we don't run for dogcatcher here."
The campaign's request that newspapers find ways of
distinguishing the candidates, at least, has had some
effect. A headline last week in The Daily Southtown, a
suburban Chicago paper, said, "Jim Ryan sues to halt
clemency hearings," and an editorial in the State
Journal-Register of Springfield this month was labeled,
"Voters no longer consider J. Ryan to be above the fray."
But there may be more work to do: The Rockford
Register-Star recently announced that George Ryan would
meet Mr. Blagojevich for the first of four governor's
debates on Oct. 7.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/26/national/26ILLI.html?ex=1034048245&ei=1&en=21f5696b5fec0b12
HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters
or other creative advertising opportunities with The
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo
For general information about NYTimes.com, write to
help@nytimes.com.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
Yahoo! Groups Sponsor
ADVERTISEMENT
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
tifatalk-unsubscribe@***********.com
Check out our new TifaTalk Online at http://www.tifa.org/forum -- now in test mode. Let us know what you think of the forum and what we could add.
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.