| On January 11, 2003, prior to exiting office, Governor George Ryan of Illinois exercised his clemency authority and cleared the state of Illinois's entire death row by pardoning the sentences of four offenders and commuting the sentences of over 150 death row inmates. The blanket commutation of Governor Ryan is one of the most significant events surrounding the death penalty since the 1972 Supreme Court decision that ruled the death penalty unconstitutional. Although clemency is often an offender's final prospect to avoid execution within the death penalty context, prior research concerning clemency decisions remains limited by the fact that it is often atheoretical and researchers have used data more than a decade old. This study specifically placed clemency decisions within a focal concerns framework and examined death row inmates who were either executed or granted clemency between 1984 and 2008. This study used logistic regression as its primary modeling technique to examine whether measures for focal concerns theory were predictive of clemency decisions. While the current measures for offender blameworthiness and protection of the community were not found to influence clemency decisions, practical constraints and consequences measured by political factors and regional location along with offender characteristics were found to predict such decisions. Female offenders, non-white offenders, and offenders with lower educational levels were most likely to be granted clemency. Whereas lame duck governors were more likely to grant clemency, governors in southern states were less likely to grant clemency. The odds of clemency were reduced with each year an offender served. |
