Governor Ryan does the right thing
“All prisoners in the US state of Illinois awaiting execution have had their death sentences commuted. Governor George Ryan, a Republican who leaves office on Monday, told 156 inmates on death row that they no longer face dying by lethal injection. The unprecedented move, the most radical since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976, is likely to spark a furious debate across the US.
‘I’m going to sleep well tonight knowing that I made the right decision,’ said Governor Ryan.
‘Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious – and therefore immoral – I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,’ he said.”
Governor Ryan believed in the death penalty when he was elected, but years of seeing how the system really worked changed his mind. Even if you think the guilty deserve death (something I don’t agree with), how can you think that it’s okay to sacrifice the lives of those innocent men who end up there because of police misconduct or incompetent lawyers?
Read the rest of the BBC article here, and read more about the subject here and here.
