The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to consider former Gov. George Ryan’s appeal of his racketeering and fraud conviction, ending his long legal battle and leaving the prospect that President Bush might eventually commute his 6 1/2-year sentence as his
The justices made no comment as they refused to take up the 74-yearold former governor’s claim that he had not received a fair trial due to chaotic jury deliberations. Chicago’s top federal prosecutor, U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald, said he was happy the high court decided to let Ryan’s conviction stand.
“Mr. Ryan has exhausted every legal avenue and argument afforded him but the verdict stands that he was guilty of corrupting the highest office in the state,” Fitzgerald said in a statement. Ryan’s chief defense attorney, former Gov. James R. Thompson, said he will seek a commutation from Bush. “We recognize that the judicial process has come to an end for Gov. Ryan and there will be no more court review,” Thompson said.
“We think that the next appropriate step is to ask the President of the United States for executive clemency.” Ryan was convicted in April 2006 of steering contracts to lobbyists and other friends, tax fraud, misuse of tax dollars and state workers and squelching an investigation of links between bribery and fundraising.
His 37-page petition to the Supreme Court claimed his chances of getting a fair trial were wrecked when U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer replaced two jurors with alternates after deliberations were well under way. The two jurors were removed for failing to mention of their police records on a pretrial questionnaire.
Ryan’s lawyers also argued the deliberations were tainted after one of the jurors, a substitute kindergarten teacher, brought legal materials she found on the Internet into the jury room in defiance of instructions.
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