Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan may go down as just another shifty pol from the Land of Lincoln, or he may be remembered as that rarity of public life - a man who discovered he had a conscience and acted upon it.

There are 171 people who won't die because Mr. Ryan couldn't bear to kill them. Last week, Mr. Ryan pardoned four men sentenced to die and commuted the sentences of everyone else on Illinois' death row to life in prison. A lot of people confuse vengeance with justice, and advocating life without parole instead of a needle in the arm can get you the reputation of being soft on crime. Mr. Ryan's term ended Monday. If it had not, this surely would have finished him politically.

To be sure, Mr. Ryan is no saint. The one-term Republican's administration was plagued by scandals that ranged from chicanery to allegations of outright bribery. Even as he left office, there were reports that federal prosecutors were closing in on the governor himself. Some people even have suggested that Mr. Ryan granted the blanket reprieves to take the heat off himself. It's hard to see exactly how that was supposed to have worked, unless the U.S. attorney had a close relative on the way to the death chamber.

George Ryan has not been a life-long crusader against the death penalty. A couple of months after he became governor, Illinois executed convicted murderer Andrew Kokoraleis. Gov. Ryan signed the execution order. And he certainly isn't someone unfamiliar with the brutality of violent crime. It has been widely reported that 15 years ago, Steve Small, a baby sitter for the Ryan children was abducted and killed. The man convicted of that crime, Danny Edwards, was one of those spared by last week's commutations. That may explain why the bitter critics of his move include his own wife.

What changed Mr. Ryan's mind was evidence - brutal, repetitive and incontrovertible proof that human beings make mistakes, and that when they do so in death penalty cases, the harm can be irreversible. In 1999, Mr. Ryan put a moratorium on executions in Illinois because since the death penalty had been reinstated there in 1977, 13 convicted killers had been exonerated and only 12 had been executed. Clearly there was a chance that sooner or later some innocent person might be put to death.

He tried to reform the system. A blue-ribbon panel he appointed after declaring the moratorium suggested 85 changes, including videotaping police interrogations to guard against cops beating confessions out of suspects. The state's legislature refused to enact any of them, which Mr. Ryan said convinced him that the commutations were his only options.

"I had to ask myself, could I send another man's son to death under the deeply flawed system of capital punishment that we have in Illinois?" he said Saturday in announcing the commutations in a speech at Northwestern University.

There is mixed evidence as to whether Mr. Ryan's action will prick any other consciences. California Gov. Gray Davis said Thursday he wants to expand his state's death row to 1,000 beds and that he definitely won't consider blanket reprieves. But at the University of Cincinnati this morning a bunch of law students from the Urban Justice Institute are releasing a study that applies the 85 Illinois recommendations to the residents of Ohio's death row. Its findings suggest that more than 50 of the 207 cases warrant serious review to ensure against fatal miscarriages of justice.

Critics of what Mr. Ryan did like to point out that many, maybe even most, of those whose lives he spared are guilty as hell. Their crimes were horrible, the lives of their victims' families shattered forever. The critics also say that some of those "exonerated," only got off on technicalities. All of these criticisms are true, and irrelevant. Our laws are supposed to set high standards for convictions to protect the innocent. Meeting those standards means adhering to the "technicalities."

As for the victims and their families, we should offer them sympathy and justice, but not vengeance. Executions will not make their loses any less permanent.

Contact David Wells at 768-8310; fax: 768-8610; e-mail: dwells@enquirer.com.