Court won’t hear ex-Gov. Ryan’s appeal again

A federal appellate court Thursday refused to rehear an appeal of the fraud and corruption conviction of George H. Ryan, a legal blow that has the former Illinois governor set to start serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence.

His attorneys, claiming the jury process was flawed, began the process of petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. They said their immediate concern was to keep the 73-year-old free on bail.

The attorneys planned to ask a federal judge today to let Ryan -- who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 after placing a moratorium on executions in Illinois -- stay out of prison until the high court decides whether to hear the case.

“This is the end of the line, the final push,” said James Thompson, Ryan’s defense attorney.

Chances are slim the Supreme Court will take the case, said Albert Alschuler, a professor at Northwestern University School of Law.

“The justices like cases that present general issues of law, and this one really doesn’t,” Alschuler said. “It’s a political-hot-potato case.”

In April 2006, a jury found Ryan guilty of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in cash and gifts for himself and his family in exchange for steering millions in state business to friends and associates. The trial covered actions dating from 1991 to early 2003, when Ryan, a Republican, was Illinois’ secretary of state and governor.

In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals denied Ryan and fellow defendant Lawrence E. Warner their bid to have the outcome of last year’s conviction overturned.

The three-member minority agreed that “the evidence of the defendants’ guilt was overwhelming” but said that the judicial process was flawed and that “a cascade of errors” had turned the “trial into a travesty.”

While jurors in the nearly six-month federal trial were weighing the evidence, the Chicago Tribune reported that two of them had not disclosed information about their own criminal backgrounds during jury selection. U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer replaced the pair with alternates eight days into deliberations and ordered the jurors to restart the process.

Ryan’s defense team illustrates the tangled strands of the case and of Illinois politics in general.

Thompson also used to be Illinois governor -- under whom Ryan served as lieutenant governor.

And before that, Thompson was a U.S. attorney for this region. In the 1970s, he won a conviction against a different Illinois governor -- the late Otto Kerner Jr. -- on charges of conspiracy and tax evasion.

“We’ll keep fighting,” Thompson said at a news conference Thursday. “Gov. Ryan’s life, like any other citizen’s life, is worth something. You don’t just give up.”

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p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com