he total to 13-one more than the number of inmates Illinois had executed since reinstating the death penalty in 1977. The Porter case and the Tribune series were enough for Governor Ryan. On Jan. 31, he declared a moratorium on Illinois executions, and appointed a commission to see whether the legal process for handling capital cases in Illinois can be fixed. Unless he gets a guarantee that the system can be made perfect, Ryan told NEwsWEEK last week, "there probably won't be any more deaths," at least while he's governor. "I believe there are cases where the death penalty is appropriate," Ryan said. "But we've got to make sure we have the right person. Every governor who holds this power has the same fear I do." But few are acting on it. In the wake of the Illinois decision, only Nebraska, Maryland, Oregon and New Hampshire are reviewing their systems. The governors of the other states that allow the death penalty apparently think it works adequately If they want to revisit the issue, they might consider the following factors: Race: The role of race and the death penalty is often misunderstood. On one level, there's the charge of institutional racism: 98 percent of prosecutors are white, and, according to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, they are much more likely to ask for the death penalty for a black-on-white crime thai: when blacks are the victims. Blacks convicted of major violent offenses are more likely than white convicts to end up on death row. But once they get there, blacks are less likely than white death-row inmates to be executed because authorities are on the defensive about seeming to target African-Americans. The result is both discrimination and reverse discriminationwith deadly consequences. The risk of errors: The more people on death row, the greater chance of mistakes. There are common elements to cases where terrible errors have been made: when police and prosecutors are pressured by the community to "solve" a notor...
