Ex-Illinois Governor's Conviction Upheld

A federal appeals court upheld former Gov. George Ryan's racketeering conviction Tuesday and rejected his request for a new trial.

Ryan's attorneys had argued that the jury deliberations were flawed. Two jurors were dismissed and replaced with alternates after deliberations had already started, and the defense said unauthorized documents brought into the jury room poisoned the deliberations.

The three-judge appellate panel disagreed in a 2-1 decision.

"The fact that the trial may not have been picture perfect is, in itself, nothing unusual," Judge Diane Wood wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Daniel Manion.

Judge Michael Kanne dissented and said Ryan and his co-defendant, businessman-lobbyist Larry Warner, should get a new trial. Kanne said the concession that the trial wasn't picture perfect was "a whopping understatement by any measure."

Ryan and Warner denied they had done anything illegal.

Ryan, was had been acclaimed by capital punishment foes for suspending executions in Illinois, was convicted in April 2006 of racketeering conspiracy, fraud and other offenses for taking payoffs from political insiders in exchange for state business while he was Illinois secretary of state from 1991 to 1999 and governor for four years after that.

Prosecutors said Ryan steered big-money state contracts and leases to Warner and other insiders while in office, used tax dollars in his political campaign and covered up campaign fundraising through the sale of truck drivers licenses.

The verdict and 6 1/2-year sentence capped Illinois' biggest political corruption trial in decades.

Ryan's appeal was largely based on a decision by U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer, who presided at the trial, to dismiss two jurors and replace them with alternates after the jury had already started deliberating.