RYAN'S DECLARATION of a moratorium in January 2000 expanded the growing national debate on the death penalty. True to form, some Illinois politicians dismissed the halt on executions as a publicity stunt by Ryan--to draw attention away from a rapidly developing corruption scandal that eventually forced him to give up on re-election.

But the depth of questioning could be seen across the country--reflected, for example, in surprisingly frank newspaper editorials against capital punishment, though they came after years of silence on the subject in many cases.

"To support the death penalty is, in effect, to support the state-sanctioned killing of innocent people," wrote the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. Florida's Gainesville Sun added: "Gov. Ryan has said he wants no innocent blood on his hands as a result of human error. The hurry-up-and-kill-em politicians would rather apologize after the fact."

But another factor was at work in pushing the death penalty into the national spotlight--the presidential campaign of the Texecutioner, George W. Bush. In his five years as governor of Texas, Bush oversaw a total of 152 executions--incredibly, more than one out of every five state-sponsored killings that had taken place since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Bush's total lack of concern about any of the issues raised by death penalty opponents added fuel to the fire.

As in Illinois, the nightmare of innocent people being sent to their death was the most prominent question. But the other dirty secrets of the death penalty system began to emerge--the frighteningly bad quality of lawyers representing capital defendants, for example, and the fact that death rows across the country are made up disproportionately of minorities and almost exclusively of the poor.

Then there's the erratic way that decisions to pursue the death penalty get made. Rob Warden, executive director of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, points out that there are 102 state's attorneys making decisions about prosecutions in Illinois--one for each county--and the state's laws do little to control them.

"If [the death penalty system] has had an error rate that's so egregious on the fundamental question of guilt or innocence," he says, "we can only imagine how serious that error rate must be when it comes to aggravation and mitigation" and the other factors that decide whether someone convicted of murder gets a death sentence or a term in prison.

Once the centerpiece of the politicians' law-and-order agenda, the death penalty was now being questioned not only by long-time opponents, but by mainstream voices. As ABC's Ted Koppel put it in bluntly summarizing a four-part Nightline investigation: "The percentage of men and women sitting on death row who are Black or Hispanic and poor is so out of proportion to their numbers in the general population that we cannot continue to insist that the system is fair or that the justice we dispense is equal. We can choose to ignore that. But we can't deny it."

The conclusions of a special commission appointed by Ryan to investigate the Illinois death penalty system only underlined these issues. When it began meeting in 2000, an early straw vote of the 14 members on the question of whether the death penalty should be abolished turned up only four in favor. But after two years of study, the margin was 8-to-5 in favor of abolition, according to press reports.

Yet that didn't make it into the commission's published conclusions--because pro-death penalty members insisted that the panel could only propose "reforms." The final report, issued last April, recommended a total of 85 reforms necessary to ensure "fairness" in the death penalty system--though the commission admitted that even if each one was implemented, an innocent person could still end up sentenced to death.

The report opened up a debate among opponents of the death penalty about whether such an unjust system could ever be "reformed"--and if not, then maybe the commission's proposals should be opposed as window-dressing. But the Illinois legislature settled the question--by refusing to pass any change at all.

Ryan proposed three separate packages of legislation to take up aspects of the commission's study, but each one was shot down. The only legislation pertaining to the death penalty that did pass the statehouse was a post-September 11 proposal to expand capital punishment--and it became law over a veto by Ryan.

"They absolutely and systematically refused, in the case of the legislature, to institute any reforms, and in the case of the prosecutors, to do any housecleaning and make any admission at all of the problems," said Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, a national board member of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, who was active in the fight in Illinois.

"Not even just to say that we screwed up, but we'll do better now. I think that was the short-term thing that really pushed Governor Ryan over the edge. He knew he had no other choice but to act, because they did nothing."

The battle over blanket clemency

AFTER A speech at the University of Oregon law school last March, Ryan responded to a reporter's question by saying that he would consider a blanket commutation of every death sentence in the state.

That was exactly what a group of anti-death penalty lawyers centered around the State Appellate Defender's office wanted to hear. They had been discussing this very possibility for more than a year--and began putting their strategy of asking Ryan for blanket clemency into high gear.

Likewise, activist groups reacted to Ryan's statement with a campaign to support blanket commutations. One of the most important parts of their efforts, these groups say, was to give a voice to those most immediately affected by the death penalty--prisoners themselves, and their family members.

So town hall meetings in Chicago featured live call-ins from death row--and the testimony of relatives. "When something like this happens, as a family member, you don't know what to do, you don't know where to turn," says Gricelda Ceja, the mother of death row prisoner Raul Ceja. "And I'll tell you, people in the Campaign were such a help as far as providing support and being there and pointing you in the right direction. We appreciate it as family members--it's just helped us so much."

Activists in Illinois worked with a new sense of urgency because the moratorium on executions seemed like it might come to an end--and possibly sooner rather than later. With Ryan not running for re-election, both the Democratic and Republican candidates for the 2002 election were pro-death penalty.

The Republican, Jim Ryan, built his political career around capital punishment. He started out in politics as the prosecutor for the Chicago suburbs of DuPage County--where he oversaw the wrongful conviction of Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, two of the best-known cases of innocent men sent to death row.

But in some ways, his Democratic opponent--and the eventual winner in November--Rod Blagojevich, was worse. For example, in pandering to the Fraternal Order of Police to win its endorsement, Blagojevich came out opposed to the videotaping interrogations, something that Jim Ryan had said he would support.

Even as death penalty opponents stepped up the pressure, the other side organized a counterattack. At hearings into clemency petitions conducted by the Illinois Prisoner Review Board, prosecutors organized a parade of the relatives of murder victims to demand that Ryan not commute any death sentences. The hearings became a media circus, with the injustices of the death penalty system drowned out by the horrible details of the murders, described by relatives reliving the suffering of their loved ones.

"That was a conscious decision by the prosecutors not to deal with the issues in these cases," said Frank Ralph, a Chicago lawyer who led the legal effort to win a special prosecutor into the Burge torture cases. "They had a chance to address these points and speak directly to the governor through the prisoner review board, and they chose not to."

Gary Gauger, a former Illinois death row prisoner who was exonerated and set free in 1996, says that the hearings were "incredibly typical of the prosecutors." "They were blaming George Ryan for these poor people having to relive the anguish of their loved ones being killed, and yet it wasn't George Ryan who called these hearings," Gauger said. "It was the prosecutors who assembled these people and had them get up there and relive the experience, strictly for the grief and shock factor. They built their careers by killing people, and this was basically a selfish ploy of their own to exploit the grief of the victims."

The ploy worked. A St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll of Illinois voters conducted before the hearings showed 50 percent opposed to blanket clemency and 46 percent in favor. One conducted a few weeks later showed the gap widening to 55 percent opposed and 40 percent in favor. Ryan himself began telling reporters that he had "pretty much ruled out" blanket commutations.

The weeks during and after the hearings were tough ones for death penalty opponents, but without their activity in the face of the prosecutors' attack, Ryan might never have felt the pressure to shift back. Members of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, for example, organized a press conference outside the clemency hearings that brought together exonerated prisoners with death row family members.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions called a second innocence conference at Northwestern, bringing together three dozen people exonerated from death rows across the country. The following day--in an echo of the civil rights movement--the wrongfully convicted participated in a relay march, carrying a letter urging commutations from the state prison near Joliet to the door of Ryan's downtown Chicago office.

On New Year's Eve, Rev. Jesse Jackson joined family members of prisoners and Campaign activists on a visit to death row in Pontiac, where he added his voice to the call for clemency. A few days later, an even larger group of relatives met with Ryan to urge him to pardon or commute the death sentences of their loved ones. And for each of these, there were a dozen other events--press conferences, pickets, petitionings, public meetings.

Alice Kim of the Campaign says that these final weeks made a big difference. "Politicians, George Ryan included, are influenced by public pressure," she says. "When the prosecutors went on the offensive around the clemency hearings, that's when Ryan said he put blanket commutations on the backburner. But then he heard from our side."

Winning hands-down

WHEN RYAN scheduled speeches on the death penalty for his final days in office at the Northwestern and DePaul University law schools--both of them centers of the legal fight against the death penalty--it was clear that he wouldn't be siding with prosecutors. Even so, the scale of his actions sent shock waves around the country.

Ryan announced the pardons for Madison Hobley, Stanley Howard, Leroy Orange and Aaron Patterson, and the blanket clemency for every other prisoner facing the death penalty. But more than that, his speeches explaining his actions were a stunning indictment--not only of the death penalty, but the whole criminal justice system.

Ryan rose to prominence in Republican Party politics as a darling of conservatives. But you would never know it from his scathing critique of law enforcement. He singled out Burge and the Chicago police, tore into prosecutors who used the death penalty to further their political careers--and then hammered state legislators of both parties for refusing to lift a finger about any of it.

For Robin Hobley, Madison's sister, who spent long years pleading for her brother's freedom, it was hard to grasp what was happening. "I didn't believe it, even though it was written in the paper, and people were telling me congratulations," she said.

"I think there were a lot of factors that led to this and opened up the doors for the governor to be able to do this," Robin says. "For Madison, one thing was me out working with the Campaign to End the Death Penalty across the country. That helped tremendously in getting the message out and for people to hear it."

Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins echoes the importance of the years of organizing. "We have a really large, dedicated, very diverse and very committed group of activists," she says. "I really do think that the activists are a lot responsible for this, because we created a public climate."

Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Convictions agrees. "Chick Hoffman of the state appellate defenders' office said, 'We were an army of ants.' And we really were," Warden says. "This took work by literally hundreds of people. You can look at this and say that, without certain components, this never would have happened. If it hadn't been for the grassroots organizations, there is no doubt that we wouldn't be where we are today."

The battle ahead

AS SOON AS RYAN finished speaking, prosecutors and right-wing politicians were sputtering and fuming for the TV cameras. Dick Devine, the Cook County prosecutor, finally admitted that the death penalty system was "broken"--but only as of that afternoon, when Ryan emptied death row.

"George Ryan was the messenger," says Larry Marshall, the legal director of the Center for Wrongful Convictions. "And because they are so personally humiliated by the message, they're shooting the messenger. But the fact is that this was a slap in the face to the system, which is exactly what sometimes is necessary as a matter of a wakeup call."

As Bishop-Jenkins puts it, "The reason why the prosecutors are saying this--your Dick Devines and Joe Birketts--is because they ran out of arguments. They wouldn't clean house, they wouldn't admit wrongdoing, they wouldn't look at their own problems, and so they had to try to pull out at the end the only card that they could play politically, which was a very emotionally manipulative one, and one which re-victimizes those victims one more time."

Death penalty opponents aren't letting Devine and Co. go unopposed. On Martin Luther King Day, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) hosted a press conference in Chicago to put pressure on the special prosecutor in the Burge torture cases--and turn up the heat on Devine. Anti-death penalty lawyers are preparing for legal challenges from prosecutors to Ryan's commutations.

Meanwhile, the three men freed from death row (Stanley Howard remains behind bars, serving time for another conviction) are determined to fight for those they left behind. "We were wondering when our turn was going to come," Madison Hobley told an audience of more than 100 at a Chicago neighborhood meeting to celebrate the victory in Illinois. "Their turn is going to come, too. They're coming home, as long as we continue to be together and fight for the cause."

Likewise, activists are turning to the fight to get rid of the death penalty, once and for all. State Rep. Art Turner and several other lawmakers have reintroduced legislation that would abolish the death penalty. At the national level, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) have said they will reintroduce measures to impose a national moratorium on executions.

Will it happen? The new Democratic president of the Illinois state Senate, Emil Jones of Chicago, says that, while he personally supports abolition, voting for Turner's proposal would be "political suicide."

But anti-death penalty activists have heard that line before. "We've got as far as we have because we made an impact on public opinion," says Marlene Martin of the Campaign. "So even though a majority of people support the death penalty, we still saw that 70-plus percent were in favor of the moratorium. That's something to build on, in making sure that people understand the real face of the death penalty--that it's brutal, dehumanizing, racist and wrong. If we can create that kind of climate, it won't be political suicide for politicians like Emil Jones. In fact, he'll think he has to do it. What happened in Illinois is an enormous step forward. This could be the beginning of the end of the death penalty in the United States."

Former death row prisoner Ronald Kitchen knows that there's still a fight ahead. If anyone has the right to be angry about the outcome in Illinois, it's Kitchen. Another member of the Death Row 10, he was hoping for a pardon from Ryan based on the pile of evidence of his innocence. But he remains unjustly imprisoned, facing a sentence of life without parole.

Nevertheless, Kitchen says, "We might be left behind, but we aren't forgotten. That's what it's all about. We have to continue to fight, and put it out there for people to see that this is not over with yet."