Tapes Released From Ryan's Prison Deposition
Updated 03/22/11 -8:07 p.m.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (CBS) -- Imprisoned former Gov. George Ryan was confident, combative and sometimes funny during a deposition in prison a year ago.
Audio tapes recorded by a court reporter have now been released to the public. Some sections were released late last month, but the tapes are now out in their entirety.
As CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports, Ryan talked about everything from what it was like days before clearing out death row in 2003 to eating prison food.
The two-hour deposition was taken last year at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind. Ryan was answering a series of questions on why he pardoned Oscar Walden Jr., a man who was wrongfully convicted of a 1951 rape and who at the time was suing the city in federal court on police torture allegations. Walden lost the lawsuit.
The audio captures a former governor who is at times forceful, at times frustrated, and often very forthcoming.
"I mean, I pardoned guys that I knew were guilty or at least thought they were, but I didn't want any innocent people killed," Ryan said at one point in the deposition when discussing his decision to pardon four death row inmates in 2003 and clear out death row by commuting the sentences of 167 others to life in prison.
"But I don't have to tell you why I did it. I just used my judgment like I did on a lot of things I did in the time I spent in government. That's what's called leadership," Ryan added.
During the deposition, he spoke at length about the days and weeks leading up to his historic decision. He said it all began when he was watching a news report in Springfield about an innocent man being set free from death row.
"I looked up and here's this little black guy with a big grin on his face, happy as hell that he'd just been released from prison after 15 years of incarceration as an innocent man," Ryan said.
"I started to work on the whole case when they freed Anthony Porter," he added. "That's when I became absolutely amazed about the whole death penalty process."
Porter was freed from prison in 1999, just 48 hours before he would have been executed, when his conviction was overturned because another man confessed to the murder that put Porter on death row.
Porter's case led to Ryan's decision in 2000 to place a moratorium on the death penalty while a state commission looked into reforms to the capital punishment system.
One of the cases he considered involved a onetime high school classmate who was on Death Row for shooting a police officer. Ryan said he bumped into the classmate's father at a meeting.
"He said, 'I've only got one question for you. Are you going to kill my son?' " Ryan said he was asked. "That was — that was a big impact on my decision, that statement in that meeting, that confrontation."
Though most of the deposition focused on Ryan's involvement in death penalty reform, he also joked about the irony of his life in prison.
"A little prison food would probably be good for all of you. I think it's bologna today," Ryan said.
He also lamented his own loss of freedom after his conviction on federal corruption charges.
"You don't know what it's all about till they take it away from you," Ryan said. "I hope you never find out."
Following more than a decade a moratorium on executions instituted by Ryan in 2000, Gov. Pat Quinn signed a bill abolishing the death penalty in Illinois earlier this month.
