Ex-governor convicted of racketeering

Appeal strategy
Afterward, Ryan attorney Dan K. Webb, a former federal prosecutor, zeroed in on the judge’s decision to replace the jurors.

“We’re going to begin working immediately on post-trial motions to try to get this verdict overturned,” Webb said.

During the trial, Webb had pounded on a theme that no one ever testified to seeing Ryan take a payoff. His powerful law firm, Winston & Strawn, represented Ryan for free — at an estimated cost of $10 million.

Ryan’s sentencing was set for Aug. 4.

The corruption scandal that led to Ryan’s downfall began over a decade ago with a much smaller focus: a federal investigation into a fiery van crash in Wisconsin that killed six children.

The deadly 1994 crash exposed a scheme inside the Illinois secretary of state’s office in which unqualified truck drivers obtained licenses for bribes. Ryan was secretary of state at the time, and prosecutors would later argue that thousands of dollars in payoff money from the licenses went into a Ryan campaign fund.

The probe expanded over the next eight years into a wide-ranging corruption investigation that eventually reached Ryan in the governor’s office.

Seventy-nine former state officials, lobbyists, truck drivers and others have been since charged. Before Ryan’s trial, 74 had been convicted, including Ryan’s longtime top aide, Scott Fawell.

1994 memo was key
Fawell was a star witness against Ryan and the author of a 1994 memo that prosecutor Patrick Collins called “the Magna Carta” of the racketeering scheme.

The memo urged Ryan, then-secretary of state, to replace inspector general Dean Bauer with someone who “won’t ask about FR tickets” — political fundraising tickets. Bauer himself pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and acknowledged the government could prove he had spent seven years covering up scandals to spare Ryan personal and political embarrassment.

Even as he faced federal charges back home, Ryan accepted speaking invitations across the country and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his criticism of the death penalty.

In 2000, the Republican governor declared a moratorium on executions in Illinois after 13 death row inmates were found to have been wrongly convicted. Then, days before he left office in 2003, he cleared death row, commuting the sentences of all 167 inmates to life in prison. He declared that the state’s criminal justice system was “haunted by the demon of error.”

The auto accident that set the case in motion killed six children of the Rev. Scott and Janet Willis. A trucking company official later said he believed the truck driver’s license was one of several bought from a state official.

The Willises, who received a $100 million settlement, attended parts of Ryan’s trial.

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