Clouded by rhetoric

We should all be troubled, but not surprised, by Gov. Owens' Monday-morning quarterbacking of Illinois Gov. George Ryan's clemency decision for inmates on death row in Illinois prisons.

Gov. Owens correctly pointed out that we are a government of laws and not of men. Clemency was chosen for the very reason that men, and not laws, had manipulated the system in Illinois to bring about death verdicts. Nearly half of all inmates on death row in Illinois were represented by attorneys who were later disbarred or suspended. Seventeen men have now been released from Illinois prisons after having been exonerated after they spent 173 years in prison. A review of the Illinois cases also showed widespread use of torture to exact confessions and prosecutorial misconduct in a vast majority of cases.

Gov. Owens is wrong when he says that Gov. Ryan put his opinions above those of the jurors, citizens and legislators. The moratorium was supported by 70 percent of Illinois residents. percent of Illinois voters had grave concerns that there were innocent people on death row.

The jurors who voted for the death penalty never knew that evidence had been hidden, that a confession had been manufactured or that the defense attorney had failed to investigate when they issued many of the death verdicts. I am sure if one were to interview these jurors, they would be angry at the role they were forced to play in a system designed for injustice. Perhaps, however, Owens is right that politicians, who have rarely been linked with courage, may have opposed clemency.

That's why Gov. Ryan issued the clemency order. He couldn't trust the next politician to do the right thing. I guess it is not surprising that Gov. Owens was not a supporter of Gov. Ryan's decision.

The lesson for Colorado in the Illinois experience is that - unless police are closely monitored, procedures designed to increase death sentences are rejected and unless adequate funding for indigent defense is guaranteed - we, too can become the next Illinois. Hopefully this message will not be clouded in the web of rhetoric.

[The] casual reader might believe Illinois' governor had seriously miscarried justice, when in fact the commutations resulted in penalties equal to the harshest imposed in most of western Europe and several states in the U.S. Our Gov. Owen's comments are also misleading in that he equates life without to the freeing from prison of felons. Righteous indignation aside, lifelong incarceration is far from a bleeding-heart alternative to murder by the state.