Marking the end of his term as Governor of Illinois, Mr George Ryan over the weekend announced the welcome commutation of some 167 death sentences and the pardoning of four further inmates off the now-empty state death row.
His move, though deeply unpopular, will provide an important boost to the US moratorium movement which has been winning adherents from both sides of the death penalty argument, particularly in the wake of multiple exonerations of convicted murderers in recent times on the basis of incontrovertible DNA evidence. Last year 71 people were executed in the US.
The freeing of the four men made Mr Ryan's case about the flawed justice system - they had been convicted on the basis of confessions extracted in a Chicago police station notorious for torturing suspects.
In 2000, following the vindication and freeing of 13 death row inmates and a major Chicago Tribune investigation of the deeply inequitable application of capital punishment, Mr Ryan, once a strong advocate of the death penalty, introduced a moratorium on executions in the state. Justifying the commutations he reiterated on Saturday his perception of the system as "arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral". He said he was "haunted by the demon of error".
His decision followed an extensive study, commissioned by him, which found inconsistencies in prosecutorial standards in dealing with black and white or urban and rural accused, expressed concern about all-white juries in cases involving blacks, and found strong evidence of incompetent legal advice for the poor.
Mr Ryan's attempts to persuade the Illinois legislature to enact reforms to deal with such deficiencies were thwarted. His commutations were entirely logical, and it is not to her credit that the state's incoming attorney general says she intends to continue to seek the death penalty in pending cases. Illinois's death row has not been abolished, only emptied.
But the Illinois experience is not unique, and the arguments which swayed the governor are believed now to command a majority in an otherwise deeply conservative US Supreme Court. Many have been shocked by the evidence of arbitrariness and proven error and are increasingly willing to hear the case for a moratorium. Although public opinion polls suggest some 70 per cent still support the death penalty, the figure drops a lot when those polled are offered the "life means life" alternative. Mr Ryan's bold gesture should make Americans pause for thought.