Illinois governor commutes death sentences

The governor of Illinois is to commute the death sentences of all 156 inmates on the state’s death row and has sent letters to victims’ families warning them of the move, his spokesman said today.

“He’s been talking about this for a few days, and in only a handful of cases was he considering, for a variety of reasons, not to include (them) in the commutations,” George Ryan’s spokesman Dennis Culloton said.

“Ultimately, late yesterday, he came to the decision this was the only thing to do.”

The governor sent letters to the families of murder victims telling them he would announce during a speech today that he was commuting the death sentences to life in prison.

Governor Ryan halted the state’s executions nearly three years ago after courts found that 13 death row inmates had been wrongly convicted since the state resumed capital punishment in 1977 – a period during which only 12 other inmates were executed.

In the United States last year, 71 people were executed, all by lethal injection except one by the electric chair.