SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, disgraced by a corruption scandal that landed him in prison yet heralded by some for clearing the state’s death row, has died. He was 91.
Kankakee County Coroner Robert Gessner, a family friend, said Ryan died Friday afternoon at his home in Kankakee, where he was receiving hospice care.
Ryan started out a small-town pharmacist but wound up running one of the country’s largest states. Along the way, the tough-on-crime Republican experienced a conversion on the death penalty and won international praise by halting executions as governor and, eventually, emptying death row.
He served only one term as governor, from 1999 to 2003, that ended amid accusations he used government offices to reward friends, win elections and hide corruption that played a role in the fiery deaths of six children. Eventually, Ryan was convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to 6½ years in federal prison.
During his more than five years behind bars, Ryan worked as a carpenter and befriended fellow inmates, many of whom addressed him as “governor.” He was released in January 2013, weeks before his 79th birthday, looking thinner and more subdued.
He’d been defiant heading to prison. The night before he went in, Ryan insisted he was innocent and would prove it. But when Ryan asked President George W. Bush to grant him clemency in 2008, he said he accepted the verdict against him and felt “deep shame.”
“I apologize to the people of Illinois for my conduct,” Ryan said at the time.
Ryan was still serving his sentence when his wife, Lura Lynn, died in June 2011. He was briefly released to be at her deathbed but wasn’t allowed to attend her funeral. On the day he left prison and returned to the Kankakee home where he and his wife had raised their children, one of his grandchildren handed him an urn containing his wife’s ashes.
Born in Iowa and raised in Kankakee, Ryan married his high school sweetheart, followed his father in becoming a pharmacist and had six children. Those who knew Ryan described him as the ultimate family man and a neighbor’s neighbor, someone who let local kids use his basketball court or rushed to Dairy Queen to buy treats when they missed the ice cream truck.
“He’s even offered to deliver the papers,” newspaper delivery boy Ben Angelo said when Ryan was running for governor. “He was serious.”
In 1968, Ryan was appointed to fill an unexpired term on the county board, beginning a quick rise in politics. Eventually, he served as speaker of the Illinois House, lieutenant governor, secretary of state and, finally, governor.
A glad-handing politician from the old school, Ryan emphasized pragmatism over ideology. He worked with officials from both parties and struck deals on the golf course or during evenings of cigars and booze.
Ryan helped block the Equal Rights Amendment in the early 1980s during his term as speaker of the Illinois House, triggering some of the most heated demonstrations ever seen at the Capitol.
“They wrote my name in blood on the floor in front of the House, in front of the governor’s office,” Ryan said. “They were trying, hectic times, frankly.”
His willingness to set aside party orthodoxy sometimes put him at odds with more conservative Republicans.
He led a failed effort in 1989 to get the General Assembly to restrict assault weapons. He backed gambling expansion. He became the first governor to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro took power. And in 2000, after signing off on the execution of one killer, he decided not to carry out any more. He imposed a moratorium on executions and began reviewing reforms to a judicial system that repeatedly sentenced innocent men to die.
Ultimately, Ryan decided no reforms would provide the certainty he wanted. In virtually his last act as governor, he emptied death row with pardons and commutations in 2003.
“Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral — I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” Ryan said.
Ryan found himself mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time federal prosecutors were closing in. Before year’s end, he would be charged with taking payoffs, gifts and vacations in return for steering government contracts and leases to cronies, as well as lying to investigators and cheating on his taxes.
Much of the illegal activity took place during Ryan’s two terms as Illinois secretary of state, including the 1994 deaths of six children. They burned to death after their minivan struck a part that had fallen off a truck whose driver got his license illegally from Ryan’s office.
Federal investigators found that Ryan had turned the secretary of state’s office into an arm of his political campaign, pressuring employees for contributions — some of which came through bribes from unqualified truck drivers for licenses. After the children’s deaths, Ryan also gutted the part of his office responsible for rooting out corruption.
Then as governor, he steered millions of dollars in state leases and contracts to political insiders who in turn provided gifts such as trips to a Jamaican resort and $145,000 loans to his brother’s struggling business, investigators found. He was convicted on all charges April 17, 2006.
The father of the six dead children criticized Ryan’s attitude at the time.
“There was no remorse in George Ryan after the verdict. That didn’t surprise me. That’s Ryan’s same attitude, a chip on the shoulder,” said the Rev. Scott Willis. “It makes it a little easier to feel elation. His attitude confirms the verdict was right.”
Anger at Ryan weakened Republicans for years and energized the gubernatorial campaign of a charismatic young Democrat who promised to clean up Springfield — Rod Blagojevich. Later, as federal investigators probed his own conduct, Blagojevich would call for Ryan to be granted clemency and released from prison.
