Corrupt, but Righteous!

I am a hypocrite with a double standard – I admit it! But George Ryan, in my book, has a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I recently bemoaned an American justice system that lets dirty politicians, like bribe-taking former Connecticut governor John Rowland (1 yr., 1 day) or greed-master Duke Cunningham (8 yrs.), get off with too-light prison sentences.

But now, former Illinois Governor George Ryan is on trial for similar graft:

Ryan, 72, and longtime friend Larry Warner, 67, a lobbyist, were charged in a 22-count federal indictment with racketeering, mail fraud and other offenses.

The indictment says that as secretary of state for eight years in the 1990s and as governor for one term, Ryan steered state leases and contracts to Warner and other friends. In return, he was rewarded with free vacations, loans for his brother's business and even money to pay the band at his daughter's wedding reception, prosecutors say.

Ryan and Warner say nothing they did was illegal.

This time, however, I hope Ryan is found innocent and, if found guilty, I beg he does not spend one single second in jail. Why? What about George Ryan that entitles him to our mercy and leniency?

On Jan. 11, 2003, outgoing Gov. George Ryan emptied Illinois’ death row, citing statistics that show the death penalty in America is racist …

CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) -- Outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan announced Saturday that he had commuted the sentences of all of the state's death row inmates and said he would "sleep well knowing I made the right decision."

He delivered his unprecedented speech at Northwestern University.

"Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die. What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having?

"Because of all these reasons, today I am commuting the sentences of all death row inmates," Ryan said.

Ryan's decision affects 156 inmates on death row in Illinois and 11 others who have been sentenced to death but who were not in the custody of the Department of Corrections because they are awaiting re-sentencing or trials in other cases.

And when it comes down to it, on the scales of justice, what has more weight: A little corruption, or ending state killing that’s stacked against African Americans and the economically disadvantaged?

According to the Campaign to End the Death Penalty:

- African Americans are 12% of the U.S. population, but are 43% of prisoners on death row. Although Blacks constitute 50% of all murder victims, 83% of the victims in death penalty cases are white.

- Since 1976 only ten executions involved a white defendant who had killed a Black victim.

- In all, only 37 of the over 18,000 executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a Black person.

- A comprehensive Georgia study found that killers of whites are 4.3 times more likely to receive a death sentence than killers of Blacks.

- More than 75% of those on federal death row are non-white. Of the 156 federal death penalty prosecutions approved by the Attorney General since 1988, 74% of the defendants were non-white.

So lets stack up Ryan’s good and bad deeds, folks. The good outweighs the bad by a ton. (By contrast, Duke Cunningham’s lawyers argued he should get leniency because he bombed people in Vietnam as an Air Force jet jock!)

I say: Free George Ryan!