Outgoing Illinois Gov. George Ryan has pardoned four death row inmates and has said he would disclose whether he would spare the lives of about 150 other condemned prisoners in an unprecedented review that has set off a new debate over the capital punishment in the United States.
"I couldn't live with our process knowing how badly it was faulted," Ryan said, calling flaws in the state's death penalty system "truly shameful."
The four pardoned were all tortured by Chicago police who allegedly placed plastic bags over the heads of three of them, Ryan said.
Three of the four were to be set free immediately and the fourth must remain in jail because of separate, unrelated convictions - though Ryan said those too may be tainted.
He said overnight letters were being sent out to the families of the remaining men and women on the state's death row, and to the relatives of their alleged victims, disclosing whether he had commuted their sentences to life in prison without parole.
Ryan will make those decisions public in a speech on Saturday, but he seemed to hint that there would be at least some commutations.
He said one issue he had discussed with the families of murder victims was the lack of "perks" and the rigors of life in prison without parole, including the fact that some life prisoners try to end their lives by starvation.
"There are prisons where there is no air conditioning ... and in every prison inmates are told what to do at all times ... I think we have to keep things in perspective," Ryan said.
His office earlier refused to comment on one report that he had settled on a mass commutation of nearly everyone left on death row.
Ryan also disclosed that former South African President Nelson Mandela had called him on Thursday urging mercy for the condemned inmates and his compatriot, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, had asked for the same in a letter.
"They both said America is the beacon for fairness and justice and the death penalty doesn't really pay homage to that," he said, adding that the pleas "had an impact on me."
Ryan is a one-term Republican whose political career was ended by a bribery scandal that occurred while he was secretary of state. Monday is his last day in office.
Illinois is one of 38 states with death penalty laws on its books. The federal government also has reinstated the death penalty and carried out its first two executions of the modern era last year.
Ryan ordered a moratorium on executions nearly three years ago after investigators found the state almost executed 13 inmates who were later found wrongfully convicted. The unprecedented review turned into a flashpoint for a renewed debate over the death penalty in the United States.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 102 such cases in 25 states since 1979.
A commission created to review the Illinois system found it, in Ryan's words, "badly broken and deeply flawed." The panel said the poor are at a disadvantage, too many crimes now draw the death penalty and police abuse and jailhouse informants too often result in capital convictions.
The United States is the only western democracy in which the death penalty is still used. The punishment has been abolished by its closest neighbors and allies, who routinely denounce the practice in the United States.
According to Amnesty International more than half of the countries in the world have dropped capital punishment by law or in practice. That group says that in 2001 China carried out the most executions, 2,468, followed by Iran, 138, Saudi Arabia 79 and the United States 66.
From 1976 when capital punishment was reinstated through the end of 2002 there have been 820 U.S. executions, 71 of them last year. There are nearly 3,700 men and women under death sentence in the United States currently.