Spare Death Row Lives, Say Experts

(CBS)  Hundreds of legal scholars are ready to side with the controversial actions of one governor in the death penalty debate.

Four hundred legal experts believe Illinois Governor George Ryan should grant blanket commutations for some of his state's death row inmates. In a letter sent Monday, the legal scholars advise the governor to "follow his conscience," reports CBS News Correspondent Peter Maer.

Ryan stopped executions in Illinois three years ago after courts found 13 inmates were wrongly convicted. The governor is reviewing 140 clemency requests. Ryan will decide before leaving office in two weeks.

The state resumed capital punishment in 1977. About 160 inmates are on death row.

In the letter, the legal scholars take exception to some death penalty supporters' view that Ryan should only consider clemency on a case-by-case basis.

"We feel compelled to share with you our considered judgment that, in our country, the power of executive clemency is not so limited," the letter said. "To the contrary, where circumstances warrant, executive clemency should be and has in fact been used as a means to correct systemic injustice."

The governor has described blanket commutation of death sentences to life without parole as being "on the back burner," but he will consider the professors' letter, spokesman Dennis Culloton said.

Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine, one of those most publicly opposed to a blanket clemency, says the professors have missed the point.

"We have never disputed that the governor has unlimited powers to grant clemency, but we believe that granting blanket clemency would be an abuse of that power," said Devine's spokeswoman, Marcy Jensen.

The professors' letter doesn't take a position on whether the governor should commute all death row inmates' sentences.

New York University law professor Anthony Amsterdam said the professors are sending the letter to Ryan "to make him feel that he can consult his own conscience and decide what he thinks is right."

Amsterdam, who organized the letter-signing campaign, said the power of clemency is broad enough "to allow the governor to use his own sense of justice and right in issuing commutations."

New Mexico Gov. Toney Anaya commuted the sentences of all his state's death row inmates in 1986. Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller did the same thing in 1970.