Dead Men Walking

By Amanda Bower

After 16 years of wearing prison-issue denim, Madison Hobley barely had time to change into the suit his wife had brought him before he was rushed out of the gate last week by Illinois officials, an exonerated man. Condemned to death for the murder of his first wife, baby son and five other people in a 1987 arson case, Hobley--who had no previous convictions--insisted that police had beaten and suffocated him to get a confession. Years later, his lawyers claimed that crucial evidence had not been made available to them by prosecutors. Yet for all the outrage over Hobley's arrest and imprisonment, his release played only a bit part in the drama of Illinois Governor George Ryan's final hours in office. After granting a full pardon to Hobley and three others condemned to death, Ryan then commuted the death sentences of an additional 157 inmates. Death row in the Land of Lincoln is now officially empty.

There is no known precedent in the U.S. for universal clemency in death-penalty cases, and Ryan's announcement was undoubtedly the most significant of his troubled gubernatorial career, which ends this week. He has put his state--one of 10 to have ordered a review of their death-penalty process--at the center of a growing national debate over the fallibility of capital punishment. Although polls show that Americans overwhelmingly believe in the moral righteousness of executing murderers for their crimes, they turn squeamish at the thought of an innocent's being punished for another's evil deeds. Thanks to DNA testing and other forensic advances, convictions are being overturned with increasing frequency.

When Ryan came into office in 1999, he supported the death penalty. But he found Illinois' record "shameful": the state's 12 executions since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1977 had been outstripped by 13 exonerations. By November 1999, half of the state's almost 300 capital cases were reversed; 46 death-row inmates had been convicted on testimony from jailhouse informants. A Chicago police commander was fired after an internal inquiry found that he and his detectives had systematically tortured murder suspects (all four inmates released last week said their confessions were coerced by these officers).

Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in January 2000 and ordered a comprehensive review. His blue-ribbon commission issued more than 80 recommendations, but the state legislature hasn't passed any reform measures. As the clock ticked on his term, Ryan began to personally review all death-row inmates' cases. "I have taken extraordinary action to correct manifest wrongs," he said. But Cook County state's attorney Richard Devine, whose office prosecuted the four pardoned men, called the Governor's actions "outrageous and unconscionable." Ryan, he said, "has breached faith with the memory of the dead victims, their families and the people he was elected to serve."

Death-penalty supporters are furious that Ryan took the criminal-justice system into his own hands, although a rash of pardons by a departing politician is not unprecedented. Some accuse Ryan of being motivated by a cynical desire to create a last-minute legacy. Dogged throughout much of his governorship by the investigation and indictment of 12 former staff members for alleged offenses that included using state money to fund political campaigns, Ryan--who has not been charged with any wrongdoing--decided not to seek re-election.

Regardless of his motivations, death-penalty opponents believe the Governor has delivered a wake-up call to the nation. For every 8 people executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1 person was exonerated from the crime that landed him on death row, according to statistics collected by the Death Penalty Information Center. Juries seem to be taking note of the uncertainty in the system: the number of death sentences issued nationwide has dropped, from 303 in 1998 to 155 in 2001, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Madison Hobley, now 42, plans this week to visit the graves of his former wife and son. Then he will begin to think about the future--buying a house, raising a family. Says Hobley: "I want a second chance to be a father." --With reporting by Maggie Sieger/Chicago

With reporting by Maggie Sieger/Chicago