Clemency hearings for 159 inmates in Illinois began today. Many view the proceedings as a trial on the death penalty itself.

"The hearings, scheduled to last the next two weeks, are the culmination of the most comprehensive review of the death penalty by any state. They come at a time when national surveys suggest public support for the ultimate punishment is diminishing, and some polls say a majority of Americans believe an innocent person has been executed in the past five years."

"The extraordinary process in Illinois has been hailed by death penalty opponents and defense lawyers. But infuriated prosecutors and grief-stricken relatives fear that outgoing Gov. George Ryan ® will exercise his right to commute unilaterally all the sentences to life without."

"Today's hearings were as much a referendum on the death penalty as they were impassioned pleas in individual cases, with national death penalty foes facing off with aggrieved survivors of victims."

The hearings were set in motion by outgoing Governor George Ryan, a Republican and a death penalty supporter. (See our posts the past few days for more of the history, here and here.)

The Washington Post article continues with:

"It was almost like flipping a coin," Ryan said in an interview. "You have to remember that out of 25 people sentenced to die in this state, 13 were exonerated and 12 were executed."

"For the next two weeks, the 14-member review panel will divide into three or four smaller panels, each of which will hear from six to eight petitions a day in government buildings in Chicago and in the state capital of Springfield. The mammoth effort has involved thousands of preparatory hours by hundreds of defense lawyers and prosecutors, expert witnesses and family members ready to testify. Ultimately, the board's recommendations to the governor will be confidential and nonbinding."

The arguments raised by defense lawyers today included "police misconduct, coerced confessions, ineffective counsel and maintaining that their clients' crimes would not have qualified for a death sentence under the new guidelines."

"Ryan brushed off the suggestion that his actions were politically motivated. Commuting all the sentences to life was just one of his options, he said, insisting that he intended to review each case within the framework of the proposed reforms."

"For example, he noted he would pay particular attention to cases in which a jailhouse informant was the sole witness against an inmate, since the review panel suggested limited use of such witness in capital cases. "The system is in terrible shape," Ryan said. "But that doesn't mean I'm saying we're going let all the prisoners go."

The Illiniois Legislature has failed to implement any of the 85 suggested reforms.

Update: Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune has another good article on the hearings, see Life or Death Debate Rages At Hearings.