Governor George Ryan of Illinois has pardoned three wrongfully convicted inmates.

Rolando Cruz, a symbol of Illinois's deeply flawed death penalty system was one of those pardoned.

"Ryan made the announcement as he spoke before the University of Illinois College of Law on the state's death penalty system. Ryan has been considering commuting the death sentences of about 140 men currently on death row."

"I wish them well; they've been through hell," Ryan said as the crowd gave him a lengthy ovation."

"Two of the men pardoned, Cruz and Gary Gauger, had been on death row. They and the third man pardoned, Steven Linscott, had already been released after their convictions were thrown out. The pardons clear the men's names and allow them to seek compensation for their wrongful convictions from the Illinois Court of Claims."

Thank you, Governor Ryan. May your successor show as much courage and conviction as you have these past two years.

Eric Zorn has some excellent commentary on the issue in today's Chicago Tribune, including these comments about why the Governor should grant blanket pardons to all on death row:

"If you grant selective commutation, you will be saying, in effect, that a careful governor can go back over old cases and neatly separate those convicts who deserve the death penalty from those who don't. If you believe that, go ahead. But you'll be retroactively invalidating the moratorium and the work of your commission and will be saying instead that the death penalty system was never "broken" as you've maintained, it just needed one extra layer of review....Reducing a sentence to life-without-parole is a compromise with human frailty, not an act of mercy. No prisoner so sentenced has ever beend."