Narrator:

This month on UMC.org Profiles, George Ryan, former governor of Illinois and death penalty opponent, shares his faith story.

Ryan, a lifetime United Methodist, is best known for his much-publicized stance on the death penalty – going so far as to impose a moratorium on executions in the state of Illinois. And just two days before the end of his term in 2002, amid much controversy, he commuted the sentences of 167 inmates on death row. After much soul-searching, he made the announcement in an unprecedented speech to a group of Northwestern University Law School students, saying, “Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.”

Ryan continues to stand firm in his decision today. He shares his story with us on this edition of UMC.org Profiles.

Gov. George Ryan:

I was born in a little town in Iowa called Maquoketa. At a very young age my father went to work, after he got out of school – pharmacy school – for the Walgreen Drug Company and got transferred to Chicago. And after a couple of months at Chicago he got transferred to Kankakee, which is about 60 miles south of Chicago. It was a rural community with some manufacturing and an industrial, conservative Republican community. And I grew up and went through the grade school, the public school system here. And I think got a lot of my values from being in the Kankakee area, and I still live here, of course. I grew up in the Methodist Church, the First Asbury Methodist Church here in Kankakee and took my communion there many years ago, and still attend.

I spent a good deal of my time in the family pharmacy. In 1948, my father opened his own pharmacy—his own family pharmacy—in downtown Kankakee. And I spent a lot of my hours there. I went to school at Ferris State College in Big Rapids, Michigan which is a pharmacy school. I worked most of my life as a pharmacist until I became a statewide public official.

The city fathers of the Republican Party came to my brother and asked him to run for mayor, and that was kind of our first exposure to anything other than voting, to the political arena. And my brother and I, we had to think about it long and hard, along with my mother and father as to whether Tom would get involved in elective politics. We weren’t sure what it might do to our business and in the end we felt it was an obligation and that we owed to the…the people of the community something back. And so Tom ran for mayor. And I got involved in helping him get elected. He ended up being mayor for 20 years. I was then…during that time asked to fill a vacancy on the Kankakee County board as a supervisor.

I felt an obligation and felt that what I was gonna do was to go to Springfield, Illinois or at least do my duty for a short period of time and then go back to my pharmacy and hopefully be able to compete with the Walgreens of the world by creating another chain of pharmacies. But I never got back.

I was appointed and then elected and stayed on the county Board for six years where I became chairman of the Kankakee County Board for one term before I was elected to the Illinois House of Representatives. I spent 2 terms in the Illinois House. That was 4 years. And then I was in the right position at the right time to become the leader of the Republican Party of the…of the Illinois House, called the Minority Leader. I was elected to that position twice. That was a 4-year stint. And then I was elected Speaker of the Illinois House. And that…that put me in the House for 10 years from ’72 to ’82. And I then left the House and ran with Governor Jim Thompson as his running mate on 2 occasions and was elected Lieutenant Governor for 2 four-year terms. And from there, again being in the right place at the right time, the Secretary of State’s office opened up and I ran for 2 terms there and spent 8 years as Secretary of State.

I always believed in the death penalty and I always believed it was a necessary part of our system – in the judicial system and in the capital punishment system – but never really gave it a lot of thought. It was there and was used to deter crime and I believed that. And in 1977 when the bill came to the House I voted in favor of reinstating the death penalty. An opponent of the bill stood up and said, “Those of you that are voting today in favor of reinstating the death penalty, how many of you would be willing to throw the switch?” That’s when they electrocuted them in those days. And it was kind of a sobering thought. And I gave it some thought and said, well, I would not want to be the executioner, but I still think it’s a necessary part of the system. And I voted for it anyway. But little did I know back in 1977 that some 20 years later as governor I would become the executioner for the state.

I was elected in November of ’98, took office in January of ’99. In February, a fellow by the name of Anthony Porter was released from prison after 16 years there on death row as an innocent person. And a group of journalism students went out and found the…the real killer. Anthony Porter was 48 hours away from being executed. He’d been measured for his burial suit and he’d ordered his last meal.

In March the first death sentence case was sent to me as governor from the Supreme Court. And we had a fellow that was due to be executed. After having looked at the Anthony Porter case and wondering whether we had made a mistake or could have made a mistake in this other case, the Korkialis case, I called a delay in his execution and studied it thoroughly, went over it, called in the prosecutors, called in the defense people, spent a good time studying the whole case. And in the end I decided that Anthony Korkialis was guilty and we executed him. There was no doubt in my mind that he was guilty. But I said to myself, who am I to make a God- like decision in taking another person’s life?

When you see how horrendous some of these crimes are, it’s a natural thing for people to want to…to have some kind of retribution or revenge in some fashion. I can’t think of anything that’s worse for…for somebody to lose a loved one in a violent manner. I understood their grief, but they all told me that they were looking for closure to the issue. Somehow they felt that they felt that this would bring an end to…to their agony. And I don’t believe that. And I don’t know that…that there’s anything that’ll ever bring an end to their agony.

There was a fellow that lived right out my back door by the name of Steve Small. And Steve became, and his wife and family, very close friends of ours. Steve bought an old Frank Lloyd Wright house here in Kankakee and was in the process of remodeling it when somebody noticed that he was in the building and who he was and realized he was a very wealthy young man. He then proceeded, this fellow (his name was Danny Edwards) proceeded to go to see his girlfriend and they plotted this kidnap on Steve Small. They grabbed him and threw him into the trunk of the car and put on a demand of a million dollars in ransom for his safety. And they took him out to this area and buried him thinking, I guess, that there might still be enough air for him to live. But he died. And so that was a very emotional, traumatic event for my family and myself. And when I came time to make a decision about the death penalty that weighed very heavily on my decision.

I believe that life in prison without parole is a fate worse than death. And I think most prisoners that are in there’ll tell you the same thing. They would probably rather be executed than to face life in prison where they have to sit and think about what they did, and think about it for the rest of their lives.

In the end I knew that I had to make the decision and I…I had a very emotional time of my life. I studied each case individually and went over each case and found a very common thread in every case of…of violence and murder and rape that these people were sent to die for. And that common thread was just that. It was violence. It was…it was children that were never loved or cared for. Somebody that led a violent life and had mothers that they weren’t sure who the fathers were. It was just…it was a terrible existence for those people from the time they were born until they become adults and all they ever knew in their childhood was violence. And so that was one of the reasons that I made the decision that I did.

I cleared out death row. The safest and best way for me and for those people on death row was to just do a blanket commutation, put ‘em all in prison for the rest of their life, and if they’re innocent they’ll at least be alive to have the opportunity to prove their innocence. If they’re executed there’s not a chance.

If you’re gonna have the death penalty you’re probably gonna execute some innocent people and that’s the price we pay for the society we live in. I don’t agree with that. I see no need for the death penalty today. I’ve come from being somebody that favored the death penalty to somebody who now wants to abolish the death penalty.

There’s a verse in the…in the hymn Amazing Grace, “once I was blind, but now I see.” And once I was blind and now I see. And I would hope that God would say to me, you…you did the right thing at the right time and saved a human life. You can use all of the Bible quotes that you want to talk about—“an eye for an eye. But there were Ten Commandments put on and one of them is “thou shalt not kill.” And I think that’s a good place for all of us to start if we’re going to quote the Bible and put religion in the…as in the forefront on this issue. And so I would just hope that God said you did what you thought was right and for that we’re gonna let you in.

Narrator:

Our thanks to former Gov. George Ryan for sharing his story with us.

This month’s profile was produced by Pam Price; interview by Lynne DeMichele; editor was Lane Denson. I’m Hilly Hicks and Profiles is brought to you by UMC.org, the official online ministry of The United Methodist Church, a ministry of United Methodist Communications.