March 14, 2003

School of Law hosts thought-provoking events

by Angela R. Anthony, Assistant Director of Public Affairs

In back-to-back displays of its aim to provide students with thought-provoking discussions of timely legal issues, the School of Law hosted two substantive events in late March. One featured law alumnus, Dr. Donald Palmisano, L'82, a general and vascular surgeon, who is president-elect of the American Medical Association. The other featured George Ryan, former governor of Illinois, who enacted an open-end moratorium on all death row inmates in his state.

AMA-president elect Dr. Donald Palmisano speaks addresses law students

Palmisano, who was invited by the student group Health Care Law Organization, returned to the law school March 28 to discuss the need for medical liability reform, a system he described as "broken." Palmisano assumes leadership of the association in June, and is only the third doctor from Louisiana to head the AMA in its 78-year history.

Before beginning his persuasive dialogue, Palmisano thanked law professors Raphael Rabalais and Dennis Rousseau and former professor Basile Uddo. He credited Rabalais with teaching him the fundamentals of constitutional law that have served him well in his recent endeavor as he deals with national lawmakers. He thanked Rousseau for teaching him how to present information and Uddo for allowing him to express his First Amendment right when, as a student, he published an article in the Law Review. "I always give credit to Loyola, and I am just very glad to be here today," Palmisano said.

Palmisano began his overview with grim statistics. He said there are now 18 states in crisis, up from a recent 12. The reason: skyrocketing medical liability premiums of $200,000 a year or more in some high-risk specialties that are forcing physicians to limit services, retire early, or move to a state with reforms where premiums are more stable. Crisis states, the doctor explained, are those where "some OB/Gyns have been forced to stop delivering babies, trauma centers have closed, and physicians are grappling with how they can continue to provide other high-risk procedures." The result, he said, is decreased quality, decreased access, and increased cost to patients.

The AMA has made medical liability reform its number one priority and believes it can achieve this goal with the passage of the bipartisan HEALTH Act (H.R. 5) introduced by Rep. Jim Greenwood (R-Pa.) "H.R. 5 could bring common sense back to our nation's medical liability system," Palmisano said. The bill would limit "pain and suffering" awards to $250,000 and place reasonable limits on punitive damages against physicians. Though the plan would not limit what injured patients could recoup for medical cost or lost pay, it would put a cap on what attorneys could earn from such legislation. Louisiana, whose law puts a $500,000 ceiling on awards, is one of six states with some sort of limit. The state law differs from the proposed legislative because it does not cap "pain and suffering" awards and prohibits punitive damages in malpractice cases.

To raise awareness and solicit support for the legislation, the AMA began a comprehensive campaign in December 1999. Palmisano began a grass roots effort this past spring. He has been widely interviewed on national talk shows, including "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS, "Crossfire" and "Talk Back Live" on CNN, "Power Lunch" on CNBC, and "Money Market" on CNN, and as a featured speaker at rallies in Georgia, Nevada, Illinois, and Ohio. The day before Palmisano's visit to Loyola, 4,000 people attended a rally in Tallahassee, Florida.

"We want to fix the system's problem," Palmisano concluded. "The AMA is trying to come up a system that gives people a real choice."

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan addresses full house

"The odds were the same as flipping a coin. No, the odds were better at predicting which side the coin would come up." This is one of many reasons former governor of Illinois George Ryan, a Republican, gave for halting all executions in his state just days before he was to leave the governor's office. In a sincere recitation of facts leading up to his monumental decision, Ryan told a full house in the law school's Gisevius Moot Court Room March 31 that he could not go on being an executor and living with himself.

Ryan was the Distinguished Speaker at the annual service awards ceremony sponsored by the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center where 10 alumni, faculty, staff, and students received recognition for their unselfish contributions to the community-at-large. Professor of Law William Quigley presented plaques to students Jermaine Florence, Karen O'Keefe and Nancy Sutton; law graduates Donna Fraiche, L'75, chair of Loyola's Board of Trustees; Deborah Henson, L'91; Maura Pelleteri, L'83; and Edward Trapolin, L'01; law professor and treasurer of the Board of Trustees the Rev. Lawrence Moore, S. J.; director of student law records Shirlene Muckelroy; and law school chaplain Arlene Wiltz. Quigley then introduced Ryan, calling the former governor's decision "an act of courage and fairness rarely seen."

Ryan, who grew up in Kankakee County in Illinois, which is 60 miles south of Chicago, said he never thought much about the death penalty. And though he had been elected to several offices in the state, he reflected, including secretary of state, state legislator, and governor, nobody ever challenged his stance on the death penalty. He said he believed bad people who did bad things went to jail and if they did really bad things, like killed someone, they were killed. Innocent people being put to death by the system "was the stuff of Hollywood." In 1977, after the Supreme Court lifted its ban on execution, a bill to reinstate the death penalty came before the statehouse in Springfield. When an anti-death-penalty legislator asked his colleagues to consider whether they personally would be willing to throw the switch, Ryan rose to his feet with "unequivocal words of support" for execution. "Little did I know I would become the executor as governor," Ryan said.

His doubts began, Ryan remembered, when in 1998 a man walked out of death row 48 hours before his scheduled execution, having been found not guilty of murder. Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students investigated and produced a video confession by the real killer. Anthony Porter, who had an IQ of 51, narrowly escaped death and was free, 18 years after his incarceration. Ryan remembered, "He had already been measured for his burial suit and had ordered his final meal. The system did not spare Anthony Porter. David Protess and his students saved him, not the system."

But in March 1999 when faced with an opportunity to stop the scheduled execution of Anthony Kokoraleis, Ryan did not intervene. "I did what I thought I had to do," he said. "I allowed the execution to proceed. It was the most emotional experience I had ever been through. It all came down to me. I felt empty inside." Within three months, three more death row inmates were exonerated after spending lengthy time in jail. Out of 25 men sentenced to death in Illinois, 12 had been executed and 13 had been exonerated. Ryan said he thought, "How could this happen in what is suppose to be the best system in the world." The judiciary began its own investigation and calls for a moratorium grew. But Ryan still resisted.

Then in the fall of 1999 the Chicago Tribune published an examination of every Illinois death-row case since 1977, revealing among other things that more than one third of all 285 cases had been reversed because of "fundamental errors," such as lawyers who showed up in the courtroom drunk, drugged, or who fell asleep, Ryan said, adding 46 percent were convicted on the sole basis of a jail house informant. "It was a shameful scorecard we had. I didn't see the justice in that system.

"I spent my life dispensing medicine to help people, maybe even save their lives, recounted Ryan who is a pharmacist by trade. "Now I was the man ordering poisonous drugs into another man's veins. How could I go along with this anymore?"

He organized a commission of attorneys, death penalty opponents and proponents, and community activists who worked two years and outlined 85 recommendations to fix the system. As he and the commission dove deeper into the death penalty issue, Ryan said his education and transformation continued. "I learned the system was rotten to the core," he said, pounding the podium for emphasis. "It was racist, arbitrary, capricious, and still nobody cared. My greatest regret," Ryan said, "is that I could not get the legislature to pass one of those reforms. How could we not pass one?"

With little time left on his watch as governor, Ryan said he did the only thing he could do. He said his decision enacting an open-ended moratorium on all scheduled executions met with strong feelings from people. Some of the backlash, of course, comes from those who say now is not the time to be soft on crime when Americans are living with daily thoughts of terrorism. To those Ryan ended by saying, "You can be tough on crime, but you can't be unfair. Now is the time for us to be a beacon of light to the world."