Former Illinois Republican Gov. George Ryan scheduled to go to prison next week.

Ryan down to last appeal
Prison term set to start in 6 days

By Michael Higgins | Tribune staff reporter
November 1, 2007

A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected former Gov. George Ryan's bid to remain free on bail while he asks the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his corruption conviction.

The ruling by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals means Ryan must report to prison next Wednesday, unless his lawyers succeed in a long-shot bid to obtain bail from the nation's highest court.

Ryan's lawyers filed that request later Wednesday with Justice John Paul Stevens in Washington.

"Realistically, the Supreme Court, I think, has not granted bail in one of these cases in 35 years or so," former Gov. James Thompson, one of Ryan's lawyers, said Wednesday. "So it's a hard slog. But this is such an extraordinary case, I'm optimistic. Of course, I'm always optimistic."

If this final bid for freedom fails, Ryan can still hope that the Supreme Court accepts his appeal and grants him a new trial, but he would have to wait in prison for months for that decision.
In April 2006, a federal jury convicted Ryan on charges that as secretary of state and governor, he doled out sweetheart deals to co-defendant Lawrence Warner and other friends and used state resources and employees for political gain.

In Wednesday's split 2-1 decision, Appeals Judges Diane Wood and Daniel Manion concluded that Ryan should report to prison as scheduled next week. In a separate opinion, Wood said there was little reason to think that the Supreme Court would hear Ryan's case, let alone overturn his conviction.

"Although would undoubtedly like to postpone the day of reckoning as long as they can, they have come to the end of the line as far as this court is concerned," Wood wrote.

But Judge Michael Kanne, who in August was the lone member of the three-judge panel to favor a new trial for Ryan, again issued a dissenting opinion Wednesday, arguing that Ryan should remain free. The former governor has a "reasonable probability" of persuading the U.S. Supreme Court to grant him a new trial, Kanne held.

"The trial was riddled with errors that ultimately rendered the proceedings manifestly unfair and unjust, notwithstanding the production of overwhelming incriminating evidence" against Ryan and Warner, Kanne wrote.

Ryan, a Republican, was sentenced to 61/2 years in prison. Federal prison officials have assigned him to a prison camp in Duluth, Minn. But his lawyers are seeking reassignment to a similar facility in Oxford, Wis., so he can be closer to family for visits.

Warner, who was sentenced to almost 31/2 years in prison, is scheduled to report next Wednesday as well at a prison camp in Littleton, Colo., near Denver.

Reached Wednesday at his Kankakee home by phone, Ryan declined to comment. A spokesman for U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald also had no comment.

In filing for bail with the Supreme Court, Ryan's lawyers argued that a series of juror controversies made his six-month trial perhaps the most flawed of any federal trial in history.

But federal prosecutors have staunchly defended U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer's handling of the trial, saying she trod carefully through a series of unusual disputes.

While the jury was deliberating, the Chicago Tribune reported that two jurors had concealed their arrest records -- information they should have revealed to the court months earlier during jury selection. After conducting her own investigation, Pallmeyer removed the jurors and replaced them with alternates, starting deliberations anew.

As it turned out, one of the jurors who was removed had been holding out against convicting Ryan on certain key counts.

In August, Wood and Manion voted to affirm Ryan's conviction, saying that the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming and that any errors at the trial were ultimately harmless.

Ryan's lawyers asked the full 7th Circuit to rehear the case, but they refused in a 6-3 vote announced last week. However, in the dissent, former Chief Judge Richard Posner, one of the nation's most influential judges, and two other judges blasted Ryan's trial as "a travesty" that went on too long.

That ruling left Ryan with only one remaining appeal -- to the Supreme Court, but it hears less than 2 percent of its criminal appeals, Ryan's lawyers acknowledged.

Thompson argued that Kanne's dissent Wednesday marked the third time that 7th Circuit judges had disagreed sharply on key issues in the Ryan case.

"I think the three together ought to be a pretty strong signal to the Supreme Court that this is an extraordinary case," Thompson said.

But legal experts said that in deciding whether to hear the case, the Supreme Court will focus more on whether it raises important, unsettled legal questions.

"They'll take it if it raises an issue of national importance," said Joel Bertocchi, a veteran appellate lawyer. "Only they know if it's a case that raises a legal issue that they're interested in."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/northwest/chi-ryannov01,1,6936811.story

what does he have to lose? 80% of Americans hating him?

in any order.

that he would be having all this trouble if he didn't order a moritorium on the death penalty?