Ray Pride

Governor Ryan kills the last of his glass of red wine.

The fourth afternoon of the Sundance Film Festival, former Illinois Governor George Ryan mingles with a crush of a crowd at a polished little bistro. Soon, he'll talk about the just-premiered documentary "Deadline," about efforts to end the death penalty worldwide, as well as his own role in bestowing blanket clemency to 167 citizens of Death Row one year and six days before this event. (Rumor has it that to keep his own legal struggles out of the spotlight, Ryan drove himself to Park City.)

Up close, Ryan looks like the easiest editorial cartoon of a classic Illinois pol, like a bureaucrat who got big. In a neat gray button-up sweater and shiny patent leather boots, with aviator glasses atop a puffy red face, he listens, unblinking.

Representatives of other groups speak in turn, including the directors, Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, and a representative of handsoffcain.org, who describes the "barbarity" of the three countries with the greatest number of executions: China, Iran and the United States. Flashes pop. Ryan chapels his hands, fingertips to fingertips. Bartenders silently fill wineglasses with white and red, which assembled journos and activists whisk away.

"It's a struggle that holds the sting of life and of death," one of the assembled pardoned tells us. "I never killed anyone in my life, but rats and roaches, I wish there were a way to deal with them. Life is not something we create, we do not bring the spark of life." Ryan focuses as he cat-cradles his fingers.

"Is justice really justice?" Ryan's left foot jitters, arms folded tightly over his sweater. He watches the room, picks up his glass from the floor, sips quickly and with a gimlet stare, returns it to the floor: this is not the polite photo op.

Lawrence Marshall from the Northwestern University School of Law Center on Wrongful Convictions introduces Ryan. With a hand extended to the former governor, Marshall asks, "Can we be brave enough to accept the possibility we are mistaken?" Marshall invokes the Quakers, saying that Ryan "spoke truth to power. This is the definition of greatness." After quoting Mandela and Schweitzer, he says, leaning toward Ryan, "May we all learn the lessons of your magnificent courage."

Stepping to the mike, Ryan smiles slyly. "I'm gonna run for office again after that speech." He quickly relates the cases--including the Anthony Porter case--which led to his thinking, "How does that happen in America?, I asked myself time and again, and I still do." Right hand in pocket, left finger poking toward the crowd, Ryan says, "The system didn't free these people, which is why I'm here today. The system, in my state at least, is broken." He clutches the mike in his fist. "The system's racist. Not by design, but it is." Again, the crowd puts glasses and pads aside to offer spirited applause.

(2004-01-20)

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Tip of the Week
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