By Jerry Crimmins, Associated Press, published in the Daily Southtown
Friday, October 18, 2002
As a parade of lawyers pleads on behalf of nearly every inmate on Illinois' death row, members of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board toss out skeptical questions and sometimes voice doubts about the marathon clemency hearings that will continue to the end of the month.
It is impossible to know what recommendations the board will make to Gov. George Ryan, who prompted a flood of clemency requests by saying he will examine every death row case before he leaves office in January.
The 14 board members are relatively unknown to the public. Used to sitting as a body, they operate in this unprecedented set of hearings in four separate panels. Since the hearings began in Chicago and Springfield on Tuesday, each panel has heard six cases a day. After each case, they call the next without rendering judgment.
Some give hints.
"Suddenly 140 people have filed petitions for clemency under the impression that they have been wronged," board member James Donahue said during one hearing this week. "I find it hard to believe that the system has been wrong 140 times."
Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000, calling the state's death penalty system "fraught with error" after 13 inmates were found to have been wrongfully convicted, including some found innocent. Ryan has repeatedly suggested since then that he may grant a blanket clemency, commuting all death sentences to life in prison without parole.
Citing instances in which college students and the media have found evidence of death row inmates' innocence, Ryan and others have suggested the capital punishment system may be too broken to fix. But at least two board members have defended the justice system in Illinois.
"There's nothing broken in our government," said board member William Harris of Marion, a former state representative, during a hearing in Springfield. "There's always room for improvement, and that's what we strive for in this country. Nothing's broken."
"The 13 ... were purged by the system," asserted Donahue. "That is an indication to me that the system is working fine."
Donahue, of Pekin, spent 26 years as Tazewell County sheriff.
Most members of the board are career government employees. They include former police officers and correctional workers, three former state representatives and members from the business community.
The board has only two lawyer-members. One is a former prosecutor. The other is from the Marine Corps.
At least eight were appointed to their six-year terms by Ryan, and the remainder appointed by previous governors, all, including Ryan, Republicans.
The board makes recommendations to the governor on petitions for executive clemency but has no final say. Board member Craig Findley said the board may base its recommendations on the members' views of legal arguments or on proportionality or mercy.
At one hearing, lawyers argued that Leonard Kidd, convicted of killing 14 people in two separate crimes, is either innocent or, if guilty, mentally retarded and deserves mercy. Board member Robert L. Dunne responded by holding up a color photo of the charred bodies of some of the 10 murdered children.
Dunne said Kidd "continues to threaten to murder guards as well as other inmates. Does incarceration for a lifetime for people like that, does that get the job done?"
Each petition includes horrific murder details combined with legal arguments, and - toughest of all - the gut-wrenching stories of the victims' relatives.
"This is like going to six wakes a day for 2 1/2 weeks," said Findley, a former state representative from Jacksonville.
"I had hoped we would have more time to consider these cases," he told a reporter.
Findley asks each family member if the convicted killer deserves death.
At the end of each day's hearings, Findley said he goes back to his hotel and plays his trombone, then calls his wife and two children.
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