SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Former Gov. Joe Kernan, who
granted clemency for two death row inmates when he was governor,
still supports capital punishment but with "much more apprehension
and much more skepticism."
The former governor, who left office in January,
spoke at the University of Notre Dame Law School on Wednesday and
said he remembers being called to the scene of a drugstore
triple-murder in 1990, when he was mayor of South Bend.
"I came away from that believing whoever had done
that deserved to die," he said.
Christopher Allen, a former drugstore employee
accused of the 1990 triple murders, is scheduled for a third trial
in August. One trial ended in a hung jury and another ended in a
conviction, which was overturned on grounds the defense should have
been permitted to introduce additional evidence.
Kernan's support for capital punishment didn't stop
him from twice granting clemency while he was governor. Last July,
he commuted to life in prison the death sentence of Darnell
Williams, a man who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection
for the 1986 murders of a Gary couple. In January, Kernan granted
clemency to Michael Daniels, an Indianapolis man convicted of a
1978 murder during a robbery.
Kernan said he put together a team of attorneys and
staff members to study the Williams case and advise him. He also
visited several people for advice. Those whose advice he sought
included the Rev. Edward A. Malloy, Notre Dame's president, and the
Rev. Robert Pelton, a Notre Dame theology professor who performed
the marriage of Kernan and his wife, Maggie.
Kernan said his decision to commute Williams' death
sentence was based on several factors: the prisoner's mental
capacity; the fact that a co-defendant who was more culpable for
the crime was declared ineligible for the death penalty because of
retardation; and questions about the role Williams played in the
crime. Indiana law bars anyone with an IQ of 75 or lower from being
executed. Williams' IQ was placed at 78 to 81. Daniels' IQ was
77.
"I felt that was an important consideration,"
Kernan said.
He said he doesn't think the clemency decision was
a deciding factor in his election loss to Republican Mitch Daniels.
He also praised former Illinois Gov. George Ryan for his 2003
blanket commutation of the sentences of that state's 167 death row
inmates.
"It took a lot of guts, and I admire him for having
made that decision," Kernan said.
