George Ryan, the former Republican governor of Illinois who stunned the nation by halting executions and clearing his state’s death row, died Sunday at age 91. His death marks the passing of one of the most consequential—and controversial—figures in the modern history of American criminal justice.
Once a steadfast supporter of capital punishment, Ryan left office in 2003 having commuted the sentences of all 167 people on Illinois’ death row. He pardoned four outright, citing their wrongful convictions. The sweeping move remains one of the boldest acts of clemency in U.S. history and a defining moment in the national reckoning over the death penalty.
Born in 1934 in Kankakee, Illinois, George Homer Ryan built a reputation as a pragmatic and tough-on-crime lawmaker. Early in his political career—first in the statehouse, later as secretary of state and lieutenant governor—he supported the reinstatement of the death penalty, aligning with the dominant politics of the late 20th century.
“I’d do it again, even knowing what it would cost me.” – George Ryan
“I voted for it. I believed in it. I thought it deterred crime,” he said in a 2021 interview with The Vanguard. “But I also believed in justice—and that meant not executing innocent people.”
The catalyst for Ryan’s transformation came in 1999 when Anthony Porter, a mentally disabled Black man, was exonerated just 50 hours before his scheduled execution. Northwestern University journalism students helped uncover evidence implicating another man in the double homicide.
“I was stunned,” Ryan said. “What kind of system lets college kids do what the courts and lawyers didn’t? That’s when I realized something was broken.”
In Until I Could Be Sure, his 2020 memoir, Ryan wrote that Porter’s case “shattered my confidence. It was the first time I truly grasped that our system could come within hours of killing an innocent man—and that we would never have known.”
Following Porter’s exoneration, the Chicago Tribune published a searing series on the state’s death penalty system, highlighting cases marred by police abuse, prosecutorial misconduct, shoddy defense work, and racial bias. Ryan responded by declaring a moratorium on executions in 2000—making Illinois the first state to do so voluntarily.
He also created the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, which issued 85 recommendations to improve fairness and accuracy. But Ryan grew increasingly disillusioned with the legislature’s failure to act.
“That was the hardest day of my life. I wasn’t just commuting sentences. I was saying the state got it wrong—dead wrong.” – George Ryan
“I waited for them to fix it,” he said. “But the reforms didn’t come. And I couldn’t in good conscience leave the decision to the next guy.”
As he prepared to leave office, Ryan began personally reviewing every death penalty case. What he found—tortured confessions, unreliable witnesses, ineffective attorneys—deepened his conviction that the system was irredeemably broken.
“I read thousands of pages,” he told The Vanguard. “Each one haunted me. You could see how poverty, race, and bad lawyering added up to death sentences. It wasn’t justice. It was roulette.”
Among the cases that disturbed him most were those of the “Death Row Ten,” individuals who said they had been tortured into confessing by members of the Chicago Police Department under the command of Detective Jon Burge. Some described being suffocated with plastic bags, shocked with cattle prods, or beaten with phone books.
Ryan personally flagged the files of Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Leroy Orange, and Stanley Howard, concluding they had been sentenced to die based on tainted evidence. On January 10, 2003, just before leaving office, he issued full pardons.
“That was the hardest day of my life,” he later recalled. “I wasn’t just commuting sentences. I was saying the state got it wrong—dead wrong.”
In his book, Ryan reflected: “Clemency is not weakness. It is strength grounded in humility. To kill in the name of justice, when justice is absent, is state-sponsored vengeance.”
The backlash was swift and unrelenting. Prosecutors accused him of abusing his power. Victims’ families felt betrayed. “I got called a traitor,” he said. “But I didn’t do it to be popular. I did it because I couldn’t sleep at night otherwise.”
Shortly after leaving office, Ryan was indicted and convicted on federal corruption charges tied to his time as secretary of state. He served more than five years in federal prison. Critics claimed his death penalty stand was a distraction from scandal. But Ryan never wavered in his defense of the clemency decisions.
“I’d do it again, even knowing what it would cost me,” he said.
International figures like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela praised Ryan’s moral clarity. Tutu wrote to him in 2003: “Your courage affirms the dignity of every human being, even those who have erred.”
George Ryan’s actions helped spark a national shift. Illinois formally abolished the death penalty in 2011. Other states soon followed. Legal scholars credit Ryan’s dramatic stand with exposing the practical and moral flaws of capital punishment to a wider audience.
In his later years, Ryan became an outspoken abolitionist, calling for a federal moratorium. “You can’t tweak this system into justice,” he told The Vanguard. “You either stop killing people, or you keep making mistakes you can’t take back.”
He is survived by his wife Lura Lynn and their children. A private service will be held in Kankakee.
Ryan’s legacy remains a subject of debate—but on the death penalty, it is etched in history. A Republican governor, once proud of his law-and-order record, chose truth over politics, mercy over vengeance. As he wrote in his memoir: “I couldn’t be sure. And that, to me, was the end of the argument.”
