Word: ryan
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CONVICTED. George Ryan, 72, ex-Governor of Illinois; of racketeering, mail fraud, making false statements to FBI agents and tax evasion, in one of the biggest corruption scandals in state history; in Chicago. The accusations ended the Republican's political career in 2003, even as he basked in global acclaim for commuting the sentences of all of Illinois' death-row inmates...
...CONVICTED. George Ryan, 72, ex-Governor of Illinois; of racketeering, mail fraud, making false statements to FBI agents and tax evasion, in one of the biggest corruption scandals in the U.S. state's history; in Chicago. The accusations ended the Republican's political career in 2003, even as he basked in global acclaim for commuting the sentences of all of Illinois' death-row inmates...
...Only seven inmates currently sit on Illinois Death Row, where about 170 were before Ryan cleared it out shortly before leaving office three years ago. Even though no executions can currently be carried out, the death sentence can still be handed down, and some 200 cases are currently in the pipeline in which prosecutors have signaled their intention to seek capital punishment...
...moratorium has had no practical effect and I think it would be good to lift it,? said Thomas Brown, the chief prosecutor for rural Livingston County, who won a new death sentence for the only person who was cleared from Death Row by Ryan but then returned for a separate murder case. ?We?ve had to start filling it back up one by one, and there?s no case that?s ripe yet so it could be 15 or 20 years of appeals before anyone actually is executed (if the moratorium gets lifted). There?s this push for perfection...
...Illinois certainly has tried to do just that. Shortly after Ryan granted clemency to some and commuted all other death sentences to life in prison, the state launched a major study and overhaul of the system. At the time, about thirteen inmates on Death Row had been found innocent and freed, one more than the number who had been executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. New reforms adopted included an overhaul in police lineups to guard against false identifications, the videotaping of most murder confessions, some state Supreme Court oversight of capital cases to make sure they...