The day of dead men walking

By ROGER FRANKLIN

Until he heard the news that Illinois Governor George Ryan had commuted the sentence of every condemned man in the state, Fedell Caffey was sure a black man couldn't catch a break in the white man's US of A.

That's a common sentiment in America's prisons, where the overwhelming majority of those waiting to die are black and all know that while murder can land anybody in a lot of trouble, killing a white person is much more likely to produce the permanent oblivion of a lethal injection.

Like most of the country's walking dead, Caffey kept up with all the latest research on the racial disparity.

Understandably, anything that might save a man from that final walk makes for compulsive reading, which is certainly how a damning report issued late last year by a University of Maryland academic was received by Caffey's lawyers: more proof that white justice views black crimes through the prism of prejudice.

Not that Caffey needed any reminders. He argued in court his entire life had been a case study in the black man's miserable lot.

Brought up in the poverty of Chicago's ghetto, prospects crimped by lousy schools and closed doors, a life of crime was a sure bet.

Mostly it had been petty stuff - truancy, muggings, drug-dealing, being lumbered with a gun. Crime, his lawyers said, was a survival strategy.

And then came the incident for which he was sentenced to die. Along with his girlfriend, Caffey went to visit his cousin's old girlfriend, who just happened to be white.

There was jealousy at work - wonderful things one woman enjoyed and the other couldn't have - and the night ended badly.

If Caffey had only stopped to think about just how catty women can be, things might have been different. Instead, his little gun settled things once and for all.

In court, and with the crack out of his system, Caffey felt like a prize dope.

"How I got messed up in this I do not know," he said. Hangdog contrition impressed neither judge nor jury. He went straight to death row.

Except for Governor Ryan's blanket clemency, chances are that Caffey wouldn't have survived the year.

All appeals had been exhausted and while his lawyers tried to be upbeat, Caffey saw through the forced smiles. Some time soon, he would be strapped to a trolley, wheeled down the hall, and dispatched while the dead woman's family watched with approval through a window of dark glass.

Now, it won't end that way. Yes, Ryan was elected as a staunch advocate of the death penalty, which continues to enjoy overwhelming support in Illinois. But as Caffey's lawyers see it, Ryan found the rare courage to change his mind.

The watershed moment came three years ago, when more than a dozen of Caffey's death row neighbours had their convictions overturned.

The police had been far too zealous, it turned out, manufacturing evidence and confessions. When those transgressions came to light, Ryan suspended all executions. Ten days ago, in between his farewell speeches, he made it permanent.

Capital punishment was "arbitrary and capricious", said Ryan, who refused "to play God". So he pardoned every death row inmate - all 167 of them - in a single, sweeping act of mercy. Since his edict applies only to those already convicted, it won't stop all executions, but his conscience will be clear.

"Our system is haunted by the demon of error in determining guilt, and error in determining who deserves to die," Ryan said. "What effect was race having? What effect was poverty having? I'm not prepared to risk an innocent person."

For Ryan, virtue proved its own reward. The papers had been full of stories about his administration's corruption. The feds were all over him, turning up allegations of graft and crooked favours.

No more of that talk. Now, a Chicago University professor is nominating Ryan for a Nobel Prize and others are compiling lists of humanitarian awards for which he might qualify.

Sister Helen Prejean, the nun from Dead Man Walking, wants him on the lecture circuit. There is talk of a book contract and movie.

True, Chicago's columnists are howling and many victims' families are livid.

But all they can do is complain, which is what the grandfather bringing up the two surviving children of the woman Caffey killed was doing last week.

It broke his heart to know that Caffey would live, said Sam Evans, adding that he dreaded the anniversary of his daughter's death, which falls on her youngest son's birthday.

But what really bothers him when it comes time for cake and candles is what fills his mind's eye.

He pictures the visitors arriving at his daughter's apartment. He sees the fight, hears the gunshots, and he winces at what happened next: Caffey and his girlfriend finishing the job with knife thrusts to his dying daughter's throat.

Then, as his toddler grandson Jordan watched and screamed, Caffey stabbed his 10-year-old sister, Samantha, to death and returned to the mother's corpse, whose abdomen he opened with butcher's shears. Then he removed the nearly full-term baby now known as Elijah, the cause of all the trouble.

As the jury was told, Caffey's girlfriend was infertile, so they killed Evans to get the child she felt she deserved.

They had planned the murder for months, the girlfriend even padding her belly to feign pregnancy.

The next day, having abducted 7-year-old Joshua Evans, the sole witness, they killed him, too, slitting his throat when poison proved too slow.

When Jordan's cries brought police to the apartment, he was covered in his mother's blood and clinging to her corpse.

Sam Evans says he is a reasonable man, and accepts the death sentence is often unjustly and inequitably applied. But this November, when the bloody birthday comes around again, he'll be thinking of justice - and that his daughter didn't get any.