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Deadline appears in local papers across the country

In anticipation of tonight's broadcast, Deadline is a story in local papers across America.

The film is a straightforward chronicle of the emotional and legal issues surrounding the transformation of Gov. Ryan. In 2000, Ryan imposed a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. Before leaving office, he commuted the death sentences of 163 men and four women to prison terms and freed four other men, citing the high number of wrongful convictions in the state.

— Film about George Ryan will air tonight on Dateline NBC.

Katy Chevigny and her small production company kept their cameras rolling in the months leading up to then-Gov. George Ryan's 2003 decision to commute the sentences of all 167 inmates on Illinois' death row.

The drama of that moment will play out Friday when Chevigny's film, "Deadline," airs during a two-hour episode of "Dateline NBC." The network will broadcast the independent film virtually uncut.

"This arrangement is kind of like a dream come true for us and for everything we have been working for all these years," said Chevigny, the film's director and a former Chicagoan

— Dateline NBC To Air Report On Ryan's Death Row Decision.

It would be naïve to think that Illinois is the only state in the union that was capable of putting an innocent person to death, and that the problems Ryan encountered were absolutely unique and isolated aberrations.

— It's Time to Re-examine the Death Penalty, by Kirsten Johnson in the Seattle Times.

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