HICAGO, Jan. 11 — Condemning the capital punishment system as fundamentally flawed and unfair, Gov. George Ryan commuted all Illinois death sentences today to prison terms of life or less, the largest such emptying of death row in history.

In one sweep, Governor Ryan, a Republican, spared the lives of 163 men and 4 women who have served a collective 2,000 years for the murders of more than 250 people. His bold move was seen as the most significant statement questioning capital punishment since the Supreme Court struck down states' old death penalty laws in 1972. It seemed sure to secure Mr. Ryan's legacy as a leading critic of state-sponsored executions even as he faces possible indictment in a corruption scandal that stopped him from seeking re-election.

Advertisement

"The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole," Governor Ryan said this afternoon. "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."

Mr. Ryan acted just 48 hours before the end of his term and one day after he took the extraordinary step of pardoning four condemned men outright. Three of those inmates spent their first afternoon of freedom attending the governor's speech at Northwestern University Law School, whose Center on Wrongful Convictions led the call for blanket clemency.

In the hourlong speech, Governor Ryan quoted Desmond Tutu, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Supreme Court Justices Potter Stewart and Harry A. Blackmun.

The governor said that even his wife, Lura Lynn, was angry and disappointed at his decision. But after several months of intense lobbying by both sides and exhaustive review of case files, Governor Ryan said, he was left with Justice Blackmun's famous declaration in a 1994 dissent, "I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

Governor Ryan told the sympathetic crowd: "The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it — I must act. Because our three-year study has found only more questions about the fairness of the sentencing, because of the spectacular failure to reform the system, because we have seen justice delayed for countless death row inmates with potentially meritorious claims, because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral."

The decision brought elation and relief on death rows at Pontiac and Menard correctional centers, and among wives, mothers and children who had spent years fighting fate. But it left prosecutors, politicians and relatives of murder victims seething with anguish and frustration.

"We have the death penalty every day because this kills us inside," said Dawn Pueschel, whose brother and sister-in-law were killed in their apartment on Chicago's North Side in 1983. "What they've done to all these victims' families, it's like we were murdered again, our family members, that's how bad it is."

Jon Van Schaik, a Chicago firefighter whose brother Roger was one of two police officers fatally shot on a South Side street in 1979, said he hoped Governor Ryan would soon faces charges in the corruption scandal and then "spend the rest of his life in prison."

"How can one person have all of this authority and power?" Mr. Van Schaik asked. "It's making a mockery and a farce out of our legal system and our prison system."

Governors have broad, virtually unchecked constitutional powers for pardons and clemency, and Mr. Ryan is at least the fourth to empty death row as he departs office, though the scale of his action overshadows the 22 men Gov. Lee Cruce of Oklahoma spared in 1915, the 15 death sentences Gov. Winthrop L Rockefeller of Arkansas commuted in 1970 and the five clemency petitions Gov. Toney Anaya of New Mexico granted in 1986.