Last year it was Jimmy Carter's turn. Will George Ryan be next?

A committee headed by a University of Illinois law professor says it plans to nominate Illinois' departing governor, George Ryan, for the Nobel Peace Prize this year because of his "heroic" and "principled" stand on the death penalty.

"George Ryan has done more to stop the death penalty here in the United States in the last three years than all of us abolitionists put together," professor Francis Boyle told me recently.

"It's Gov. Ryan, a conservative Republican, who has opened up this debate."

Ryan caused a nationwide stir in January 2000, when he put a halt to executions in Illinois until the state could study how they were being administered. The reason? Illinois had exonerated more death-row inmates in the 23 years since capital punishment became legal again than it had executed.

"Until I can be sure that everyone sentenced to death in Illinois is truly guilty, until I can be sure with moral certainty that no innocent man or woman is facing a lethal injection, no one will meet that fate," Ryan declared.

The errors in many of these cases were uncovered by an intrepid team of journalism students at Northwestern University. Gov. Ryan set up a commission to study the state's capital-punishment system, and last April it produced a report recommending that the death penalty not be restored until 85 reforms are made in the system. They include reducing the number of capital crimes, exempting the mentally handicapped, and sparing anyone whose guilt was determined primarily from testimony by an accomplice, prison informant or single eyewitness.

When a system requires such a drastic overhaul to be fair, it says to me that there's virtually no way it can be fixed.

Gov. Ryan's decision was gutsy, especially since he doesn't oppose the death penalty on its face - just the application of it in a classist, racist way that gives a fair shake only to those who can afford to hire good lawyers.

Maryland's governor also declared a moratorium, and just last week the study he commissioned on capital punishment in the state found that it too is deeply flawed. Specifically, Maryland prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty in cases where white people are the victims. This isn't the first time that a study has found racial bias in the application of the death penalty.

The United States is almost the last large, democratic, economically developed country that embraces the death penalty. The rogues' gallery of countries that still execute people includes the governments we love to hate, among them Iraq, Iran and North Korea, along with our allies Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Capital punishment has become such an embarrassment for the United States that countries such as France have refused to extradite American fugitives unless we promise not to try to execute them.

You might ask: So what does attacking the death penalty have to do with world peace?

Previous Nobel Prize winners have included humanitarians such as Mother Teresa as well as others who have negotiated peace agreements. Professor Boyle said his committee believed the Nobel Prize committee was leaning toward rewarding the efforts of more human-rights activists.

Gov. Ryan's administration has been tainted by an investigation into the sale of driver's licenses when he was secretary of state. If he survives it without serious damage, his stand on the death penalty will be what he is remembered for. On Friday, with three days left in his term, he pardoned four death-row inmates, saying their confessions had been coerced by Chicago police. Then, on Saturday, he commuted the death sentences of 167 people to life in prison.

He has taken a giant step toward eliminating the death penalty - an archaic, inhumane and capricious punishment in the world's most powerful country. Many have won prizes for less.

Sheryl McCarthy is a columnist for Newsday.

Copyright 2003 Philadelphia Inquirer

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