Posted on 09/19/2005 8:55:39 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
CHICAGO - Former Gov. George Ryan arrived in court Monday to face charges stemming from a federal investigation that already has found his former campaign committee, campaign manager and chief of staff guilty of racketeering,
Federal prosecutors have accused the Ryan administration of doling out big-money state contracts and leases to political insiders, resulting in charges being brought against 79 people, including many state employees.
Ryan, who maintains he is innocent, did not speak as he made his way through security and defense attorney Dan Webb said they had decided not to comment publicly during the trial.
"This is going to be a long trial. It's going to last several months," Webb said. "One thing I'm confident of is at the end of the day, after the jury's heard all of the evidence, they will find and see that George Ryan is not guilty of all charges in this indictment."
Some 300 prospective jurors had filled out detailed questionnaires last week asking them about their backgrounds and how much they followed political scandals.
Ryan, who won accolades from capital punishment critics by clearing the state's death row before he left office in 2003, faces 22 charges of racketeering conspiracy, mail fraud, lying to the FBI and tax fraud.
"They haven't got one witness that said they gave me a corrupt dollar or they paid me off in any fashion with money," the 71-year-old Republican said in a July interview with Chicago's WGN-TV.
The charges grew out of the federal government's Operation Safe Road, which initially focused on bribes exchanged for drivers licenses but over seven years expanded into a full-blown investigation of political corruption when Ryan was secretary of state and later governor.
Of the 79 people charged, 73 have been convicted and none acquitted.
Ryan's former chief of staff, Scott Fawell, who is now serving a 6 1/2-year sentence, is penciled in as the government's leadoff witness and prosecutors say he could be on the stand for as long as three weeks.
Ryan was elected secretary of state in 1990, served two four-year terms and was elected governor in 1998. But he retired after just one term as the so-called bribes-for-licenses scandal grew and his support in opinion polls took a swan dive.
"He was basically unelectable by the time he made the decision not to run," said University of Illinois-Springfield political scientist Kent Redfield.
Just before leaving office, Ryan pardoned four men on death row, saying evidence against them was unconvincing, and commuted the sentences of the remaining 167 death row inmates to life. He had earlier put a hold on state executions, citing a flawed system that sent 13 wrongfully convicted men to death row.
Some death penalty opponents now stand by his side.
"My assessment is that the government case relies entirely on witnesses of extremely dubious credibility whose testimony has been procured under extreme coercion," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University law school.
At the core of the indictment is an allegation that Ryan gave Warner all but free reign to see that leases and contracts in the secretary of state's office went to Warner's clients. Millions of dollars for computers, license plate stickers, laminated strips for vehicle titles and a digital drivers licensing system were awarded this way, according to prosecutors.
Warner, in turn, funneled two loans totaling $145,000, one of which was never paid back, into the foundering business of a Ryan family member, prosecutors claim. They say that Warner pumped $6,000 more into a Ryan family business and paid more than $3,000 in Ryan family wedding expenses while furnishing other unspecified money and gifts to his political benefactor.
Ryan declined to discuss the trial with The Associated Press.
"It's one of those things that's happened. We'll see how it all comes together," he told the AP in a recent interview.
FWIU, prosecutors are generally not allowed to introduce evidence of a defendant's character in an effort to score a conviction, but if a defendant tries to call character witnesses, the prosecution is allowed to rebut them (even if doing so well totally trashes the defendant's character).
That is not even the crime. A truckdriver who legally received his license could have had the same accident. I think that he is responsible for other deaths that nobody talks about. The fire in a government building on a Friday afternoon may have been set to destroy boxes of records from when he was Secratary of State, and it destroyed lives as well. I guess that they thought that Friday afternoon would be safe and employees would have left for the weekend.
I was living in Chicago in '98 and voted for Poshard. It was the only time I ever voted for a Dem. Ryan was both a RINO and a crook.
I didn't know about this one. Thanks for mentioning it. A crook in one way will be a crook in aonther, up to and including murder.
I just hope govenor Taft hasn't caused the ruination of the OH GOP the way governor Ryan has will the IL GOP.
That's the thing about RINO's, eventually you get the horn.
FWIR, several people had tried to tell the driver his load was loose when he was at a rest stop, but he was unable to understand English. Since ability to understand English is a requirement for a CDL, there is a clear cause-and-effect relationship between the corruption and the "accident".
The "R" stands for "retard", not "Republican".
If my memory serves me right it was a part from the trailer, not the load.
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