Former Gov. George Ryan gives inside look at death penalty’s demise, own shortcomings

When he was still trying to decide if he should commute the sentences of everyone on Death Row in Illinois, then-Gov. George Ryan went to a favorite place — Manny’s Deli in Chicago.

“In Manny’s, no one puts on airs,” Ryan wrote in his new book, “Until I Could Be Sure: How I Stopped the Death Penalty in Illinois.” He says that “(f)or the most part, I could grab my tray and go through the cafeteria-style line like anyone else.

“As I munched on my corned beef sandwich, my cell phone rang,” he recalled. “My staff back at the office wanted to connect me to a caller — Nelson Mandela!

“I tried to maintain my composure, but I was shocked. I was sitting in a delicatessen with all kinds of working stiffs in jeans and business people in suits — and I’m on the phone with one of the best known, renowned and respected men in the world.

And he called me.”

Ryan’s book, co-authored by Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Maurice Possley, went on sale Friday. While it mostly delves into the behind-the-scenes of his decision to purge Illinois’ death row, the former governor also acknowledges his own legal troubles.

Ryan spent more than 5 1/2 years in federal prison on corruption convictions for actions dating back to his days as secretary of state. He says his work on the death penalty issue was unrelated to his own legal problems. He garnered international attention as governor for questioning a capital punishment system he saw as severely flawed.

Ryan recounted briefly meeting Mandela in Johannesburg when Ryan was in South Africa trying to develop business opportunities for Illinois. During that meeting, Mandela, who was ill at the time, praised Ryan for issuing a moratorium on the death penalty.

At Manny’s, Ryan listened as Mandela — then the former president of South Africa who had challenged his country’s apartheid system and survived 18 years in prison — spoke in a “strong and clear” voice and urged a blanket commutation for all on Illinois’ death row.

“Revenge of this kind — the death penalty — has never made the world a better place,” Mandela told Ryan. “Governor Ryan, the United States has always set the standard for the world as far as justice, except where the death penalty is concerned. You can set a new standard.”

He got a similar call from Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

“Other world leaders, including those from Mexico, Poland, the Vatican, and the European Union, similarly urged me to commute all death sentences in Illinois,” Ryan wrote.

Giving an emotional speech at Northwestern University’s law school three days before the end of his single term as governor in January 2003, Ryan did take everyone off death row — with most of the more than 160 inmates affected switched to life in prison sentences. As reported at the time, the move drew impassioned reactions by those on all sides of the death penalty debate.

But Ryan, 86, of Kankakee, said in an interview Wednesday that he does not regret the decision — the result of years of examining the fairness of using the ultimate, irreversible sanction. And he says he thinks the death penalty should be ended nationwide.

“I think if you’re going to have a penalty that’s going to kill somebody, you better have it written so it’s perfect,” Ryan said. “And the death penalty is not perfect, and it can never be perfect.”

The book provides a detailed look inside Ryan’s thoughtful transition from a law-and-order legislator to someone who ultimately decided the death penalty had not been and could not be administered fairly. At one point, the book details Ryan’s discussions with top aides as he agonized over what ultimately would be the one execution that occurred under his watch -- that of Andrew Kokoraleis in March 1999.

Kokoraleis had been involved in a series of sadistic killings known as the “Chicago Ripper” murders in Chicago and its suburbs. Ryan got hundreds of letters from anti-death penalty advocates. There was also testimony of murder victim Lorraine Borowski’s mother, calling Kokoraleis a “monster” and asking for execution.

“I agonized and felt unmoored,” Ryan wrote. But he allowed the punishment to be carried out.

“That night was the most emotionally draining night of my life,” Ryan wrote. “And I learned that when you’re responsible for putting a person to death, it sticks with you.”

As the book recounts, Ryan was in the Illinois House when the state reinstated the death penalty in 1977 with his vote. But by the time he emptied death row in 2003, 12 people had been executed but 13 were found innocent. He also pardoned four people late in his term and said he had no doubt the number of innocent men freed from death row was really 17. He called that “an embarrassment” and “a catastrophic failure.”

Illinois had seen confessions coerced through beatings by police, evidence from jailhouse informants found to be false, and the coming of DNA testing that showed some on death row were innocent. Ryan also pointed out the racial and regional disparities in the way prosecutions were handled, including all-white juries sentencing African-Americans to death.

“You are five times more likely to get a death sentence for first-degree murder in the rural area of Illinois than you are in Cook County,” Ryan had said. “Where is the justice and fairness in that?”

Ryan notes in the book that the day he was sworn in as governor — Jan. 11, 1999 — the Chicago Tribune published the first of a five-part series on prosecutorial misconduct. That series identified nearly 400 homicide convictions nationwide over 25 years that had been reversed because prosecutors either failed to disclose evidence of innocence or knowingly used false evidence. One of the authors of that series was Possley.

Ryan also wrote that he was “stunned to my core” while watching the news in February 1999 and seeing Anthony Porter, an Illinois death row inmate, walking free following an investigation by a professor and students at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Porter had a low IQ and at one point had been two days away from execution.

Ryan contacted the professor, David Protess, and later pardoned Porter. The case, Ryan said, “caused something inside me to shift” on the death penalty.

Ryan was under severe scrutiny at the time he announced his decision to empty death row. An investigation that included secretary of state workers taking bribes to issue truck drivers’ licenses resulted in charges against 79 people. Ryan had been secretary of state before being elected governor and in December 2003 after leaving office he was charged with racketeering, mail fraud, and making false statements.

Ryan was accused of receiving cash and gifts in return for allowing associates to profit from contracts and other business with the state. He said a jury — including replacement of two jurors who failed to disclose criminal backgrounds—decided in 2006 he had deprived citizens to their right “to my honest services as a public official.”

He began his prison sentence in November 2007 and says that a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision held that honest services law was restricted to the payment of bribes. While a post-conviction petition on his behalf noted that none of the 83 prosecution witnesses in his cases “testified that I took anything from anybody to perform my official acts,” the court rejected it.

“Since my release on July 3, 2013, I have resumed my life,” he wrote. “I know all too well that when many people hear my name, they think first of my trial, the conviction, and the prison term. Yes, I went to prison. It happened, I got through it and I have moved on.”

“I don’t think I was criminally wrong,” Ryan said Wednesday. “I think there was a lot of miscarriage of justice there. The prosecutor said he wanted to bag two governors — and he got (Rod) Blagojevich and me.”

Ryan didn’t seek a second term. In 2002, Democrat Blagojevich ran as a reformer and was elected. He ended up being convicted on federal corruption charges and being sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was to be released in 2024 but was freed in February when President Donald Trump commuted his sentence.

Asked if he agreed with Trump’s action helping Blagojevich, Ryan said, “Sure I did.” He said he thinks the length of Blagojevich’s sentence was “terrible.”

Ryan said he is in good health. While in prison, he lost his wife of 63 years, Lura Lynn, in 2011. But he was allowed to visit her for a critical two hours. His new book is dedicated to her, and “my solid family.” It was “love at first sight” when he met Lura Lynn in high school, he wrote, and their “marriage made in heaven” produced six children, 17 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.

Two of their children live in Springfield.

Ryan said that in recent years, he was fortunate to meet a widow, Alice “Kitty” Kelly, and they had “a great relationship for six years that made my life a joy.” Though she died in June 2019, he said, “I inherited her family and they inherited me. … I am now blessed with an even bigger loving family that keeps me busy.”

Concerning the death penalty — Blagojevich kept the moratorium in place. And on March 9, 2011, Gov. Pat Quinn signed legislation ending the practice in Illinois.

The 278-page book, published by Rowman & Littlefield, has a list price of $32 hardcover, and $30 eBook.

Contact Bernard Schoenburg: Bernard.schoenburg@sj-r.com, 788-1540, twitter.com/bschoenburg