Monday, January 13, 2003 :::
Grandma mentioned Saturday night that George Ryan is being talked about as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. "I'm sure that occurred to him," I responded.
As a good conservative, I'm wary of any government enterprise, especially one that can result in death or otherwise relies on a degree of perfection. A healthy concern about flaws in the death penalty, perhaps to the point of abolition, is a position for which I have a fair amount of respect. The wonton, indiscriminate use of the pardon and commutation power to accomplish a legislative purpose one couldn't accomplish legislatively is not something I respect.
The legislature couldn't reform it. Lawmakers won't repeal it. But I will not stand for it.
In other words, he's right, the legislature is wrong, and he's going to throw his toys at passing strangers from his pram. It's this very moral superiority that is at the heart of most of the arrogance of public officials today.
Far and away the clearest evidence, though, that this is an act of arrogance above all else is its timing. The moratorium was in place, and going to stay there; nobody was about to be executed if he didn't act. The only significant event that he was trying to precede was that the power to do this would have gone to someone else.
The death penalty in Illinois is not imposed fairly or uniformly because of the absence of standards for the 102 Illinois State Attorneys, who must decide whether to request the death sentence. Should geography be a factor in determining who gets the death sentence?
Sure it should. He complained elsewhere in his speech — I'm drawing on memory here, having listened on the radio — that murderers were five times likelier to receive the death penalty in rural counties than in Cook County (of which the county seat is Chicago). Shouldn't the people of Cook County have the right not to use the death penalty? Does he think they should be required to do so?
He complained that only 2% of murderers get a death sentence. If that number were higher, he'd be happy? He commuted a death sentence to forty years last week because that was the sentence a co-defendant got. (Pickering's in all kind of trouble for using that logic.) If they should have both received death, do we count as progress making the sentencing twice as erroneous? If more people should be executed, shouldn't we at least get started on the ones that the courts will let us?
Again, I support the death penalty more in theory than in practice, for exactly the same reasons as Governor (as I post this) Ryan. (I probably support it in practice as well, but less than in theory.) What galls me, though, is his refusal to accept the opposing point of view as valid, and his use of a power for purposes for which it was not intended. At one point, he asked the purpose of the death penalty. I wish instead he had asked the purpose of the commutation power.
::: posted by dWj at 12:35 PM
