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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: Robert Crimo pleads guilty
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2025 21:46:33 -0500
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On 2025-03-04 6:24 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
> 
>> . . .
> 
>> Do you have the death penalty in Illinois? I'm guessing not; the article
>> I read predicted he would never get out of prison but didn't take about
>> execution.
> 
> One of our governors who went to prison (George Ryan, Republican, for a
> significant amount of bribe taking when he was Secretary of State
> administering driver's services and an unqualified truck driver killed a
> half dozen people) put a moratorium on the death penalty. It wasn't
> constitutional but no one had standing to challenge it. Eventually the
> legislature repealed it.
> 
> A notorious murder trial, the Ford Heights Four, was the political
> scandal that led to ending the death penalty. A jury was chosen in
> violation of the Sixth Amendment (prosecutors had used pre-emptory
> challenges to eliminate blacks from the jury) and an exculpatory
> eyewitness statement to police was withheld from the defense.
> 
> But there were other cases in which there had been a death penalty after
> an unfair trial for various reasons, or when it had become obvious that
> the defendants were actually innocent.
>  
> George Ryan ended up commuting or pardoning a great many men on death
> row. I still think he was partly motivated to gain sympathy knowing the
> federal prosecution he was facing.
> 
> Just think about how corrupt the justice system would have to be for a
> politician in my state to be forced to do the right thing.

A thing I've seen many times over the years has been the statement that 
the institutions in Country X are notoriously corrupt; this statement 
always seems to contain the unspoken follow-on "unlike MY country". But 
it's become increasingly clear to me that EVERY country has corruption, 
even mine and yours. Nobody gets to say "I live in a perfectly honest 
country"; the best we can say is that "my country is more honest than 
many" (or, in some cases, "at least my country isn't the MOST corrupt in 
the world").

It's a shame. I could see a role for an institution designed to root out 
corruption on an ongoing basis in EVERY country. We could all do better 
in that department.

 From what I read in Ryan's wiki article, he really didn't get hit too 
hard compared to what could have happened; just a few years in prison 
and another few months under house arrest. He's apparently still alive 
today.

-- 
Rhino