Editorial
March 2000

Abolish the racist death penalty

Illinois Governor George Ryan, a Republican who favors the death penalty, stunned political commentators with an announcement on Jan. 31 that he was proclaiming a temporary halt to executions in the state. No other state in which the death penalty prevails has undertaken such a move. Illinois has executed 12 men since the U.S. Supreme Court gave the states a green light to resume capital punishment in 1976, but what precipitated Ryan's action was not a reversal of his position on the death penalty itself, but instead a devastating string of releases of prisoners-13 in all-who had been wrongly convicted and sentenced to die. The 13 released men reflected the national Death Row population in that most of them were Black.

While some noted that Ryan's action coincided with an increase in intensity of a Federal investigation into financial corruption in his gubernatorial campaign, in all likelihood it was the need for an attempt at damage control in the face of the near-total discrediting of the criminal justice system in Illinois which motivated him.

The Illinois moratorium announcement had a slow but sure impact outside the borders of the state. President Clinton announced on Feb. 4 that Ryan's action had provoked him into considering a similar move which would cover those under Federal death sentence, but almost as quickly decided against it. Like Ryan, Clinton does not oppose the death penalty and even signed a death warrant for a mentally retarded man in his last days as Governor of Arkansas.

In addition to whatever may have briefly taken place in Clinton's conscience, the Illinois moratorium will continue to affect national politics in this presidential election year. Texas Governor George W. Bush has already had to defend what can only be described as the assembly line pace of executions-7 in this year alone-in his home state. He has, however, remained adamant in defense of the death penalty as an institution and refused to halt the Feb. 24 execution of a woman convicted of killing her husband. This was the second woman put to death in Texas since 1976.

Ryan's action and the national reaction it garnered show the growing impetus of the small, but significant, anti-death penalty movement. It is highly unlikely that Ryan would have taken the action he did without the grassroots pressure of the supporters and family members of the wrongly condemned men and the tireless activity of those who, like the Northwestern University journalism students who exposed the discrepancies which existed in the case of Anthony Porter, released from Death Row in February of 1999, aided in the overturning of the convictions in the 13 cases.

Activity from within the prison walls has played a part as well, as much publicity of the cases of the Death Row 10-Chicago men convicted with the help of confessions tortured out of them by police officers-has been gained by the self-organizing they have undertaken in their own defense.

While a moratorium is not an unconditional victory, it is a significant development in a positive direction. There is every possibility that the inquiry Ryan proposes to launch into the death penalty in Illinois may result in some recommendations for reforms and a resumption of executions. But it does present an opportunity for further efforts toward anti-capital punishment education and agitation.

Despite what is generally recognized as a national predominance of public support, or at least tolerance of, the death penalty, there are signs that things may be changing. Five states currently have moratorium bills pending in their legislatures and a number of city councils, including Philadelphia, the home town of journalist and Pennsylvania Death Row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal, have gone on record in support of moratorium bills.

Furthermore, the moratorium permits those opposed to the death penalty to reflect on the concept of abolitionism itself, a term increasingly used by the movement to describe itself and its goal. The nineteenth-century American abolitionists were characterized by nothing if not their unflinching devotion their cause and an absolute refusal to compromise it. If the movement is to measure itself against that historical yardstick, then indeed a model exists for a campaign which will welcome the respite a moratorium represents, but will in turn use it to push forward towards the building of a real movement against the racist American institution of the death penalty.

The small victory conceded to the movement against capital punishment by the disorganized criminal justice system in Illinois is to be welcomed. It should redouble the efforts of all those opposed to executions carried out by the state power of a monumentally inequitable social system.