Ronald Ryan
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Ronald Joseph Ryan (c. 21 February 1925 - 3 February 1967) was the last man to be legally executed in Australia.
He was a forestry worker, champion cyclist and small-time criminal. His social standing improved when he married the daughter of the Mayor of the middle class Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn, with whom he had three daughters. He was sent to prison for the first time in 1960 for factory-breaking and stealing offences. His time in prison was productive and he exhibited a disciplined approach to study and was regarded as a model prisoner. However, upon his release on parole in 1963 he quickly returned to crime and, after convictions for multiple counts of shop-breaking and a weapons offence, he was returned to prison in 1964 to begin a 13 year sentence.
On 19 December 1965, in a highly organised and audacious plan, Ryan and fellow prisoner Peter John Walker escaped from Pentridge Prison. Prison officer George Hodson was shot and killed during the escape after Ryan overpowered a guard and took his rifle. While Ryan's defence counsel argued at his subsequent trial for murder that the ballistics evidence indicated that the fatal bullet entered Hodson's body at such an angle that Ryan would have had to have been 8.5 feet tall to have fired the shot, eye-witnesses testified that Hodson had been stooped when running, thus accounting for the bullet's fatal angle of entry.
Ryan and Walker successfully eluded their pursuers outside Pentridge and escaped using a car they commandeered outside the prison. After a massive police manhunt, and after a period of widespread community fear, Ryan and Walker were re-captured in Sydney after 19 days on the run, and extradited back to Melbourne where they were jointly tried for the murder of prison officer Hodson. Walker was later also tried for the shooting murder of an associate during the period when he and Ryan were at large. After a trial in the Victorian Supreme Court lasting twelve sitting days, Ryan was convicted of the murder of Hodson, and sentenced to death, the mandatory sentence at that time. Walker was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter and subsequently sentenced to 12 years' imprisonment.
Philip Opas QC, Ryan's counsel, has said that the 12-man jury evidently thought that the death sentence would be commuted as had happened in the previous 36 death penalties since 1951. According to one jury member's later account of the discussions in the jury room, not one member of the jury thought that Ryan would be executed. They were so sure that the death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment, that they did not even discuss the issue of making a recommendation for mercy along with their guilty verdict. When it became apparent that the Liberal premier Mr (later Sir Henry) Bolte intended to proceed with the execution, four jury members sent petitioning letters to the Victorian governor, stating that in reaching their verdict, they had believed that capital punishment had been abolished in Victoria and requesting that the governor exercise the Royal Prerogative of Mercy and commute Ryan's sentence of death.
The approaching execution of Ryan prompted widespread protests in Victoria and elsewhere around the country. Newspapers in Melbourne, traditionally supporters of the Bolte government, deserted him on the issue and, while accepting Ryan's guilt, ran a campaign of spirited opposition on the grounds that the death penalty was barbaric. While Ryan's defence team raised doubts at the trial about Ryan's guilt, it was generally accepted that he was guilty, but was an inappropriate candidate for the gallows. There is some evidence that, for premier Bolte, Ryan's execution was an opportunity for him to re-assert his political authority after he had been thwarted by legal manouevres to ensure the execution of Robert Peter Tait in 1962.
All the protests were to no avail and Ryan was hanged at Pentridge prison at 8 a.m. on Friday 3 February 1967. He was almost 41 years old.
While it was not successful in averting Ryan’s execution, the protest campaign to save Ryan from the gallows ensured that governments around Australia regarded it as too difficult politically to ever resort to the death penalty again. Within twenty years, capital punishment would be abolished federally and in all state and territory jurisdictions.
[edit] Last legal execution in Australia
[edit] References
- The Last Man Hanged (The Documentary Film on Ronald Ryan - Guilty or Innocent?) [Bill Bennett - released 1993 by Ronin Films]
- Who Hung Ronald Ryan? (A Documentary Film on The Execution of Ronald Ryan [Australian Broadcasting Corporation - released 1987]
- The Last Of The Ryans (A movie based on the story of Ronald Ryan) [Richard Brennan - released 1997]
- Hanging of Ronald Ryan (A Book on Capital Punishment and The Victorian Community) [Bernard and Deirdre Slattery - released 1994]
- Remember Ronald Ryan (A play based on the story of Ronald Ryan) [Barry Dickins - released 1994]
- Guts and Pity (The Hanging that ended Capital Punishment in Australia) [Barry Dickins - released 1996]
- Odd Man Out (The Life and Death Story of Ronald Ryan) [David Lowe - released 1993]
- The Hanged Man (The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan) Mike Richards, [ISBN 0-908011-94-6]
