243: Later That Same Day
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
What can 20 years do to you will consider the case of George Ryan, former governor of Illinois, lifelong Republican. Ryan is famous for one of the most dramatic flip flops any big league politician has made in this country on an issue in the last few decades. In February 2000, Ryan, a death penalty supporter, tough on crime, declared a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. First state to do that in decades. You may have heard about that. And he's spoken about that decision in public a lot. But we found this recording of a speech that he made at Northwestern University. One of the rare times that he's talked about his decisions so personally and emotionally. And among other things, he told the audience how he had actually been one of the lawmakers who put in place the very law that he ended up suspending. This is back when he was representative to the Illinois General Assembly. In 1977, I voted to reinstate the death penalty in Illinois. I vividly remember an opponent, a capital punishment who challenged those of us who voted to put capital punishment back on the book. I was standing on the floor of the house and I had punched my green button. And somebody on the other side stood up and said how many of you that are voting green would be willing to throw the switch in the electric chair? It was a sobering question and a sobering thought. I don't want to execute anybody and I don't want to be the executioner. I didn't want to have anything to do with that. But he believed in the system, believed it was fair, and he voted for the death penalty. Twenty years passed, more than twenty years, Ryan becomes governor. And around the same time, it was becoming clear that there were problems in the way that Illinois was sending men to death row, one case after another was being overturned. And then, the hypothetical question that that legislator had asked back in the 1970s became a very real question for George Ryan. He was the one who had to decide whether the switch would be thrown in the case of a man named Andrew Cook-Rillius. I began a very extensive review in the case file. I wanted to make sure that there were no mistakes. I called in my trusted friends, both prosecutors and defense lawyers, to have them review the case files. I talked to investigators and I talked to everybody that I could that had some knowledge about the law and I agonized, frankly. I'm a pharmacist who had the good fortune to be elected governor of this great state. And now suddenly, I showered the burden of making the decisions about life or death. Tuesday, March 17, the day before the execution, Ryan still did not know what to do. At one point, he had his aides type up a stay of execution. At another, he asked for the prayers of Illinois residents. By 7 p.m. he declared that he was convinced that Cook-Rillius was guilty. Six hours later, Cook-Rillius was dead. What comes through in this particular speech is Ryan's anger at having to be the one to decide after so many people along the way had done such a careless job at figuring out guilt in this and other cases. Within a year, he had declared his moratorium. Get this one. This ought to open everybody's eyes.
Transcription truncated.