Is the ultimate solution truly the best one?

The battle over the death penalty isn’t one that will likely be resolved anytime soon. Even though support is declining, most Americans are still convinced that the only way to meet evil is with the ultimate penalty. You kill someone, the state kills you. It’s that simple. But is it? “Deadline,” a documentary directed by Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, doesn’t exactly answer the question, but it does pose it in an interesting way. It looks at the struggle of former Illinois Gov. Dan George Ryan to decide whether to commute the death sentences of all of Illinois’ death-row prisoners. Governor from 1999 to 2003, Ryan eventually did decide to spare the lives of 167 condemned convicts just before leaving office. His reasoning: If the system couldn’t make absolutely sure that each man the state executed was innocent, then capital punishment should be abolished. As he has said since, “(T)he capital punishment system just doesn’t work… . Our system should either be repaired or repealed, and I’m not sure it can be repaired as this point.” Not everyone would agree. But it’s a question that’s not going to just go away. “Deadline” is proof of that.