Gov. George Ryan’s moratorium on the death penalty is a bold stroke of historic proportions, combining courage, compassion and common sense. No other state has such a moratorium in place. His unexpected move flies in the face of public and media sentiments, which favor capital punishment, however wrong in principle, when it is administered fairly.
His position is all the more surprising and commendable for a generally hard-line conservative Republican who has been under heavy fire of late.
The next critical question is what can be done to eliminate the wrongful convictions that prompted Ryan’s action. There is a readily available answer.
Starting late last year, some of Illinois’ leading judges, lawyers, academics and citizens formed Justice Summit 2000 to propose wide-ranging reforms for what they perceive as a “flawed and erratic” criminal justice system.
Among the co-chairs of the initiative are former Chief Judge Abner Mikva of the District of Columbia federal appellate court, now a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; Geoffrey Stone, provost of the University of Chicago; Sheila Murphy, recently retired presiding judge of Cook County’s 6th Municipal District;defense attorney and former federal prosecutor James Montgomery; retired U.S. Sen. Paul Simon, who leads the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University; senior federal Judge Milton I. Shadur; Dawn Clark Netsch, professor of law at Northwestern University; Rob Warden, founder of Chicago Lawyer and author of books on wrongful convictions; retired Illinois Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon; and Alexander Polikoff, longtime executive director of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. The group also includes 54 delegates of comparable stature.
Justice Summit 2000 has thus far met twice in general sessions and expects by year-end to have agreed on a litany of hard-nosed reforms focusing on reasons for wrongful verdicts in the criminal justice system, ranging from murder cases to lesser offenses.
Gov. Ryan’s moratorium calls for answers: how the process can be made more reliable–as close as possible to certain where human lives hang in the balance, and in any instance where innocence and guilt are to be decided.
The governor’s order provides great impetus to the Justice Summit 2000 movement that was well under way before his announcement. The participants in Justice Summit 2000 aim to correct flaws in the criminal justice system and will not shrink from stands, including prosecutorial misconduct, police abuse, weak defense, or incompetent or corrupt judges, which will create discomfort and angry opposition, and highlight these elements of the process that stand in the way of justice.
The leadership of Justice Summit 2000 is committed to providing, hard, sensible, practical answers and reforms of a system that too often has failed.
