Ex Illinois Governor Who Spared Every Death Row Inmate Weighs in on Louisiana Governor’s Attempt to Do the Same (Exclusive)

On Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards directed his state's pardon board to consider clemency for nearly all of the state's death row inmates, citing personal beliefs based on his "deep faith" as well as "the imperfect nature of the criminal justice system and the actual innocence" of some who've been sentenced to die.

Twenty years ago, former Illinois Gov. George Ryan helped pave the way for Edwards' decision when he took the action of sparing the lives of every one of the state's 167 death row inmates.

With the lives of 56 of 57 death row inmates in Louisiana hanging in the balance, Ryan says his decision in 2003 — just two days before leaving office — was necessary even if controversial.

"If the system is broken by any other system in government you either fix it or you abolish it," Ryan tells The Messenger. "In my case, it was broken and the legislature wouldn't help me fix it so I abolished it."

Ryan also granted pardons to four death-row prisoners he had concluded were innocent.

While the former governor says he's unfamiliar with the specifics of Louisiana's use of capital punishment, he believes it's incumbent upon the leaders of each state to take a hard look at its death penalty system and act accordingly.

"I didn't have a hell of a lot of choice [in Illinois]," Ryan says. “The system was corrupt and being mishandled by those that have been empowered to do those things, and if they don't want to change it and make it right, then it shouldn’t be allowed."

Edwards outlined similar thinking in a letter he sent to the Louisiana pardon board on Wednesday. There are "a number of reasons, whether based in law or science that support the need for mercy" that led him to support legislation to end the death penalty in Louisiana, he wrote in his letter.

"While that effort failed in the Legislature, the Louisiana Constitution gives me as Governor and this Board the authority and the duty to consider these applications for individuals already sentenced to death," Edwards continued. "We should not shirk that obligation."

Following the failure of the bill to ban the death penalty in the state, 56 out of 57 inmates on death row filed a clemency plea in June.

Louisiana's Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, a front runner to become the state's next governor and a supporter of the death penalty, issued an advisory to the board last month that the death row inmates did not qualify for hearings because of a missed deadline.

The Louisiana Board of Pardons and Paroles did not return a request for comment by The Messenger.

The applications were turned away before Gov. Edwards directed the board to consider them on Wednesday, setting the stage for potentially commuting the death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If that happens, Edwards will join Ryan as well as other governors who've stepped in to remove inmates from death row, including New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine in 2007, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in 2020, and Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in 2022.

At the time of his decision, Ryan says his entire staff as well as other political leaders were against it — but that didn't stop him. 

"I didn't want to look back and see somebody got executed that was innocent and hadn't gone through the correct procedure," he says.