GEORGE RYAN MORE PATHETIC THAN HEROIC

            On this date, January 11, 2003, just two days before leaving office, Ryan commuted (to "life" terms) the sentences of everyone on or waiting to be sent to Illinois' death row—a total of 167convicts—due to his belief that the death penalty could not be administered fairly.

            George Ryan is now out of Prison since being released on July 3, 2013. Even though he speaks out against the death penalty, not even the A.C.L.U Demons would use him as a speaker, as it is too embarrassing for them to do so. In memory of those whose justice was denied in Illinois, we will post two articles, one from Pat Buchanan and the other from Daniel Greenfield:

George Ryan

INTERNET SOURCE: http://townhall.com/columnists/patbuchanan/2003/01/15/moral_corruption_in_illinois

Moral Corruption in Illinois

Patrick J. Buchanan

January 25 2003

Declaring the imposition of the death penalty to be "arbitrary, capricious ... and immoral," Illinois' exiting, scandal-plagued Gov. George Ryan commuted the death sentence of every rapist-murderer and child-killer in the state.

This decision "commands respect," cooed the Washington Post. Gov. Ryan "leaves Illinois a better place." From the rejoicing in the penitentiaries of Illinois, 167 murderers agree.

One suspects the people of Illinois do not. For it is Ryan, who in trying to salvage what remains of his reputation, has committed an act at once arbitrary, capricious, immoral and anti-democratic. Pandering to an elite that is obsessed with the death penalty, Ryan abused his power and showed manifest contempt for the will of the people who elected him as a supporter of capital punishment.

Again and again, in Illinois and across America, people have voted to retain this ultimate sanction for the most vicious and vile killers among us. Our Constitution provides for a death penalty. For centuries, it has been a part of our criminal justice system. When Illinoisans elected Ryan, they were voting to retain it. Every killer on death row is there because a jury, after hearing all the evidence, voted unanimously to put him there.

"A decision on who gets the death penalty in the United States is as arbitrary as who gets hit by a bolt of lightning," declares Ryan. This is demagoguery. To get hit by a bolt of lightning, one need only be outdoors. To get a death sentence in Illinois, one must commit an act of deliberate murder against a citizen of Illinois.

Ryan even played the race card. "Two-thirds of the inmates on death row were African-American," he said, suggesting they were there for racist reasons. Why did he not mention the percentage of murders committed by African-Americans? Some 97 percent of death-row inmates were men. Was that because Illinois juries hate men?

Ryan announced his decision to a wildly cheering crowd at the Northwestern University Law School. Families of the victims of the soon-to-be-reprieved killers were not invited.

"I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death," said the governor in conscious echo of Justice Harry Blackmun – who became famous, 30 years ago, for his Roe v. Wade decision, derided by his fellow justices as "Harry's abortion." In Roe, Blackmun permitted an exception to his blanket opposition to the death penalty. Unborn children may be killed at the whim of their parents. And since Roe, 40 million unborn babies have gone to the chopping block. This is the morality George Ryan and his ilk are imposing upon us.

"The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it – I must act," said Ryan.

What pomposity. Ryan does not speak for Illinois. He was not even popular enough to be renominated by his own party. His record cost the GOP the state. Yet because a legislature rejects his "reforms" and refuses to repeal capital punishment, Ryan plays king and turns all the inmates on death row out into the general prison population. If any convict or guard is murdered by these released killers, the blood will be on Ryan's hands.

"How can one person have all of this authority and power?" asks John Van Schaik, a Chicago fireman whose brother, a cop, was murdered on the South Side. "He is making a mockery and a farce out of our legal system and our prison system."

And our political system. Though Americans, in survey after survey, support prayer in school, halting illegal immigration and retaining the death penalty, they are told they may not see their will enacted into law. Even when they vote against the moral code of the elite, unelected judges and justices abuse their power and impose it upon us.

In one lifetime, America has been reshaped, undemocratically, into a nation that would, in many ways, not be recognizable to mid-20th-century Americans. It is happening in Europe, as well – the steady transfer of power to anointed elites answerable to no one.

"Here, sir, the people rule!" Americans boasted in the 19th century. In the 21st, the claim is a joke.

Elected as a conservative Republican, Ryan long ago forfeited the support of Illinois conservatives. They are through with him. Power slipping away, facing possible indictment, he sold out to an establishment that alone may be able to save him from ending his days eating off plastic trays alongside the murderers he helped to evade justice. George Ryan is more pathetic than heroic.

INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/illinois-death-penalty-was-abolished-based-on-a-lie/

Illinois Death Penalty was Abolished Based on a Lie

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On November 11, 2014 @ 9:28 am In The Point | 18 Comments

Earlier this year I wrote about the lengths that anti-death penalty activists are willing to go to fight the death penalty. That included torturing the murderers they claimed to want to protect.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection did not represent cruel and unusual punishment. The question hinged in part on the risk of pain through the procedure. In 2010, the American Board of Anesthesiologists warned it would decertify any anesthesiologist participating in the death penalty. Then the supply of sodium thiopental, the medication mentioned in the ruling, was cut off.

The goal was to raise the “substantial risk” of serious pain in lethal injections and move the Supreme Court toward outlawing or suspending the death penalty. The worse an execution went, the more likely it was that future executions would be stopped based on the risk of it happening again. By making lethal injection as messy as possible, the pro-criminal lobby was torturing killers now to save future killers.

Making the death penalty as painful as possible was one tactic that anti-death penalty activists used to try and outlaw it. Another involved straight up framing someone else for the crime.

Identified by several eye witnesses, Porter was sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of Jerry Hillard and Marilyn Green at a south side Chicago park in 1982. He was just two days from a lethal chemical injection when he was freed in February 1999 following Simon’s confession.

Then-Gov. George Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in 2000, and Illinois abolished capital punishment in 2011.

How was that confession obtained? You know those nice liberal movies portraying amoral cops as willing to do anything to frame an innocent black man?

Kind of like that except the amoral cops were really amoral liberal activists.

Protess and two of his journalism students came to Simon’s home in the 200 block of E. Wright St. in Milwaukee and told him they were working on a book about unsolved murders. According to Simon, Protess told him, “We know you did it.”

Then Simon received a visit from Ciolino and another man. They had guns and badges and claimed to be Chicago police officers. They said they knew he had killed Green and Hillard, so he better confess if he hoped to avoid the death penalty.

They showed him a video of his ex-wife, Inez Jackson, implicating him for the crime — a claim she recanted on her death bed in 2005 — and another video of a supposed witness to the crime who turned out to be an actor.

They coached Simon through a videotaped confession, promising him a light sentence and money from book and movie deals on the case. Simon, admittedly on a three-day crack cocaine bender, struggled to understand what was going on.

Perhaps worst of all, they hooked up Simon with a free lawyer to represent him, Jack Rimland, without telling him that Rimland was a friend of Ciolino and Protess and in on their plan to free Porter.

At Rimland’s urging, Simon pleaded guilty to the crime and even offered what sounded like a sincere apology to Green’s family in court.

Some conservatives decided that the Innocence Project was a good thing to be involved in. This should be a wake-up call. Like everything else, this is another social change project featuring Ends Justify the Means reasoning that included framing someone who didn’t do it just to discredit the death penalty.

We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost. Once they convinced Simon it was for his own good, he was all in.

Time for us to get out and stay out of ventures like this.