Ryan? How Could They?
Wycliff also said, “There’s been disagreement among us on the board for some time, and the earlier editorial reflected a consensus view of things. The last one reflected my view of things….The Tribune supports the use of the death penalty in extraordinary cases, but by God we also depend on elected officials to exercise the utmost judgment to see that things like this do not happen.”
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If Du Page County authorities had got their way, Wycliff’s editorial argued, “Cruz and Hernandez would be dead now, executed…on the basis of ‘evidence’ that was never more than a tissue of lies.” Wycliff saluted the truth tellers: Zorn; law professor Lawrence Marshall, who’d represented Cruz; an assistant attorney general and a Du Page County sheriff’s investigator, who’d both repudiated the prosecution by resigning. “But it is not enough to praise the heroes,” Wycliff continued. “Those who did wrong or were derelict also must be held to account. At the top of this list must be Illinois Atty. Gen. Jim Ryan, who as DuPage County state’s attorney mounted the first two prosecutions of Cruz. Ryan needs to explain why getting a conviction was more important to him than getting justice.
Some readers–I’m not one of them–might feel betrayed. They might be wondering where the Tribune gets off, posturing in public about the ethical principles that guide it (Wycliff’s present job as public editor involves making sure readers never stop admiring the paper for those principles) when its own deepest convictions turn out to be a pose. But look at this from the Tribune’s point of view. As a callow profligate threatens to seize the state’s reins and run it into the ground, must the paper that could best raise the alarm be bound by a minion’s anguished outburst seven years ago?
Since Axelrod is a Democratic political consultant, you can make what you wish of his opinion. At any rate, the Tribune endorsement hailed Ryan’s “strength of character.” It called Ryan a man who “can make a firm decision when a decision must be made. And the next governor needs to be someone who can make brutally firm decisions.” Holding that governor to a higher standard than it could just now hold itself to, the Tribune asserted, “Illinois, more than ever before, needs a governor who understands that when he says something, he is supposed to mean it.”
