At the behest of outgoing Illinois Governor George Ryan, clemency hearings began today in the cases of Illinois prisoners on death row. All prisoners will be given a hearing. The process is expected to last nine days with hearings lasting approximately one hour for each inmate.

The first inmate to have a hearing this morning was Leonard Kidd. "During Kidd's hearing, attorneys attacked the death penalty on two fronts. Attorneys said he is mentally retarded and that executing him constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. And in an argument that is expected to be made several times, attorneys said Kidd was tortured by Chicago police detectives."

"Lawyers also questioned the legitimacy of a system that has sent men to death row who were later exonerated. "It has become apparent that our state's death penalty system is severely flawed," said lawyer Charles W. Hoffman in a hearing for Kenneth Allen, who pleaded guilty to the 1979 shooting deaths of two Chicago police officers."

"Prisoner Review Board members in Chicago and Springfield will listen as defense lawyers, prosecutors, expert witnesses and victims' relatives argue for or against execution in what might be the most sweeping review in U.S. history."

"This is remarkably historic and without precedent," said David Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "All eyes in the death penalty movement are on Illinois."

The board's recommendations will be confidential and the final decision as to whether to grant clemency will be up to Governor Ryan.

We think it is important to recognize why this is happening. It is not because Governor Ryan, a Republican, opposes the death penalty, is "soft on crime" or is acting out of some sort of anger over the bribery scandal that plagued his term as Governor.

It is because during his term, 12 people were executed in Illinois but another 13 on death row were found innocent by later DNA testing. The system is broken.

Ryan commissioned a study of the system. In the Commission's report, 85 death penalty reforms were recommended. The Illinois legisature did not implement any of them. For an excellent article on the Report , we recommend Think First, Execute Later, written by one of the Commissioners. We applaud Governor Ryan's actions and hope other states follow suit, with both a moratorium on the death penalty and clemency hearings until and unless the system can be fixed.