I see your point. But my arguement is that the governer has pardon powers, not to erase the penalties of the state, but to selectively interfere in select cases where the innocence or crime of the individual does not demand the DP in the eyes of the state. I know what the Il constitution says (cus I looked it up), and it does say that he can pardon/commute/repreave anyone he wants. I do not think that those powers where giving to him so that if he doesnt like the death penalty that he can abolish it while he is governer. I am saying that that is abusing the powers that were bestowed on him by the people. He obfuscated an entire law by undermining it with those powers. And to me, if not illegal per se, it is supra legal (is that a term?), and he went beyond his constitutional authority to change a law he did not agree with.
If he personally had a problem with the DP, then he can protest along with the other millions who think killing anyone for anything is morally wrong. If his disingenuous assertions that the system was screwed up so bad, then he should have used his responsibility to fix it. Or at least made the problem so much of a big deal to Illinois that it would have been taken care of if he personally didnt want to take the time. So, it seems to me that he became an ADP extremist, that once he found out he could not change the law, would strike a blow for the home team on his way out the door. And in the course, undermining the whole system that he was elected and swore to protect.
Personally I don’t care if these guys rot in prison or die tonight. I do care if an innocent person dies. I also care if innocent people get convicted of other crimes they didn’t commit and lose irreplacable time or things happen that they cannot redeem. But I do not advocate doing away with the justice or prison system because of it. And if innocent people are being killed then the system is flawed. And must be fixed, or abolished by the people. Instead of the Governer doing that, al he was worried about was the people he could do something about so that he can sleep better at night. I am sure he doesnt have nightmares about showing mercey to people who murder, rape, and mutilate men, women and children. Not that I would want him too either:)
This is getting somewhat prickly, but I don’t think it’s that Ryan disagrees with the death penalty so much as he disagrees with the implementation of the death penalty in Illinois. I think in theory Ryan finds the death penalty a valid punishment, but the way it was being arbitrarily handed out in Illinois he found unfair. And it should be noted that he did not change a law; the law is still in place (IIRC) although the application of the death penalty is on hold due to the moritorium. There are still cases pending trial in Illinois where the prosecuters intend to seek the death penalty and, if the prosecuters win, the convicts will go to an empty death row.
My mistake on wordage again. I did, however, go into great detail on how he made it a nonentity while he was in power, and after he had a change of heart. All he did was put a band-aid over the cancer and walk away from it.
My mistake on wordage again. I did, however, go into great detail on how he made it a nonentity while he was in power, and after he had a change of heart. All he did was put a band-aid over the cancer and walk away from it.
I’m going to disagree. Re-read that article you linked to; only in the catchy headline did it say that Ryan changed his stance on the death penalty. It said nothing of whether or not that he was anti-death penalty, only that he couldn’t bear to see others die under an unfair system and that he wasn’t willing to play god and choose which ones would live and which ones would die.
I haven’t read anything anywhere saying he’s changed his mind about the death penalty. I’d say it seems more like he’s lost faith in the process that puts someone in the execution chamber.
And, you know. I can live with the fact that he couldn’t handle the burden of having the “godlike power” over life and death of so many people. My arguement is why he did not take the words of one of the people who influenced his decision, and whom he quoted several times in his speach.
Ex-gov Pat Brown said he hoped the law would be changed but added: “My oath of office takes precedence over all else in my public life and actions.”
I’d like to say that despite all we’ve done here, I think Ryan was wrong, and the death penalty is still OK, and as a citizen of Illinois, I’d like to say, “oops, sorry” to those that we’ve killed in the name of justice. Really, we didn’t mean it, we were just doing the will of the people.
Now, I’m not sure how many of you are from Illinois, but I will tell you that, having followed Ryan’s career from his election to his chicken-shit, 11th hour commutation of convicted criminals, he’s been totally, completely and embarrassingly full of shit. So far, he’s lied about everything he’s ever promised. Those of you from the Chicago area know about the “Hillside Strangler” that area of roadway that goes from 8 lanes to 2. Ryan promised to fix that, and 12 billion dollars later after his pet pork “Illinois First” project, that wretched stretch of roadway still drives up the collective blood pressure of daily users of the 290, but by God, Midway Airport looks like fucking disneyland. Ryan is a Democrat in Republican clothing, he’s a liar, a cheat, a fraud, a misfit, a scoundrel, a crook, and an assassin of character, who has committed more misconduct in the name of his own benefit than any single person, or group of people in the history of Illinois politics, and this includes Chicago. Or so I opine. The only bright spot in this, is that with any luck, someone, somewhere, who is a relative of a victim, will, once the smoke of anger clears from their eyes, see their way clear to locate some type of armament, and dispatch this loathsome scoundrel forthwith, and with all due haste and vigor.
So you think using genital electrocution to force an innocent man to confess to a crime he didn’t commit is just peachy? You have no problem with having the murder of said innocent man being carried out in your name?
Real moral high road you’ve got going on there.
Why? The rest of the western world doesn’t think so? Why must you persist with horrific punishments that don’t work, aren’t effective and the rest of us disposed of around 30 years ago?
Oh, that’s fucking nice. Would you like to say that to the families of the innocents who were murdered by the state? “Oops, sorry, we just really had a desire to kill someone. Too bad your son got in the way, but hey, at least we fried that other guy.” Hey, wouldn’t you love it if someone shot your mother, and followed it up with “oops, sorry”?
The funny thing is that after they shoot Ryan and are put on death row, people like you can clamor for their head on a stick.
So what if the man was loathsome and otherwise a scoundrel? The only place that would come into play on this issue is debating Ryan’s motives for issuing the commutations. You, however, are engaged in character assasination. The condition of Chicago roadways, while obviously important to some, is not the issue at stake here. Yes, Ryan was a horrific governor. Yes, he was an incredibly corrupt politician. But yes, he did do some good in his final hours in office. Shit, I’m willing to say that Nixon at least did some good in the White House (talks w/ China and pulling troops out of Vietnam, for instance) despite his massive corruption. But I’ve yet to say “Well, Watergate ruined him for me; he did absolutely no good and I think after he got out of office, someone should have killed him”.
But again, Saen, this is a political argument, not a legal one. You acknowledge that he legally can do what he did; you argue that he shouldn’t have been able to. This sentence of yours sums up the problem:
That is precisely the power given to Gov. Ryan. If you were to look into the history of the pardon power, it was commonly used en masse - all condemned prisoners were pardoned/commuted upon coronation of a new king, after a military victory, etc. A governor’s pardon power is a direct-line descendant of the pardon power of kings. Even today, there have been instances of governors consistently using pardon power to effectively nullify certain laws; the example that springs to mind is pardons consistently granted to convicts who killed their domestic abuser.
Actually, you are the one guilty of attempting this. You are attempting to arbitrarily place limits on the law of pardon.
You may well be right that the pardon power should be limited in the future - I also think that it is overbroad. But your accusation that Gov. Ryan somehow acted improperly and abused his pardon power is simply false. One cannot abuse an absolute power, by definition, nor can one use it improperly.
If a jury can find OJ Simpson not guilty, it can surely as hell err on the other side and find an innocent person guilty of a capital offense. As it is impossible to consistently find all capital offenders guilty (you may not have the eye witness, the smoking gun, etc.), and as a result innocent persons may be executed by the state, captial punishment is, and will forever be, a flawed piece in our judicial system and should be found un-Constitutional as being cruel and unusual.
