| In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors. |
Former Illinois governor to visit state, discuss death penalty
Monday April 21, 2003SACRAMENTO (AP) Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan who emptied his state's death row just days before leaving office plans to take on California's death row policy.
Ryan, 69, will be the star witness at a legislative hearing Tuesday in Sacramento looking at the state's use of capital punishment.
``I'm not coming out there to dictate to California what you ought to do with the death penalty,'' he said. ``I'm just going to say, 'Take a look at your system and make sure you don't have problems.'''
Few state lawmakers are pushing for repeal of the death penalty, but a grass-roots movement in California has been gaining speed since Ryan emptied Illinois' death row of all 167 inmates.
Four counties in the San Francisco Bay Area and nine cities from Sebastopol to Santa Monica have passed resolutions calling on Gov. Gray Davis to issue a moratorium on capital punishment.
Capital punishment, however, remains politically popular in California, which has the nation's largest death row population of about 620 inmates.
Ryan's appearance Tuesday before the Select Committee on the California Correctional System will be his first before a state legislative body outside Illinois.
Ryan acknowledges that he's unfamiliar with California's policy, but said he ``can't believe every state has solid death penalty laws, and Illinois is the only one that doesn't.''
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