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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Right, but in order to be executed in this country you have to clear the entire appeals system, which makes it very unlikely you are ever going to be free again. |
Under the Omnibus Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, convicts have an extremely short period in which to introduce newly discovered evidence which may exonerate them (it's one or two years from the date of sentencing). The appeals process was also "streamlined." The "problem" was that it was taking too long to execute prisoners, so Congress decided to make it harder for death row convicts to fight their sentences.
quote:
Hey Che any idea on if these 4 people might now want to sue the police/prosecutors office for what happened to them? If they act unethically during an investigation and you wrongly to jail because of it then you could receive financial compensation from the courts... |
Under IL law, they are limited in the amount of money the can collect for wrongful imprisonment. It's an insultingly low amount, especially considering the lawyers fees that are usually racked up. Last time I looked, it was something like $35,000US. Sometimes the legislature will pass a bill granting specific indivudals more money.
AFAIK, you cannot sue individuals for wrongful prosecution. Even if you were wrongly convicted, you had recourse to due process of law. Plus, the government in its infinite wisdom feels (and probably rightly) that if the police, prosecuters, and judges were liable for making mistakes that they wouldn't be willing to carry out their jobs anymore. On the other hand, you can sue if your civil rights were violated, i.e., you were tortured or the police manufactured evidence against you or the prosecuter didn't divulge all of the information they had, etc. Judges, however, are totally exempt.
Rolando Cruz was given $75, 000, after spending, IIRC, eight years on death row. The police and prosecuters who put him behind bars were tried but eventually the case was thrown out because the prosecution failed to proove malitious intent.
If you feel like spending the money, go to www.chicagoreader.com and look up the keywords "torture" and "Burge" in the archives section. It costs $3.95 to get a copy of the articles that really helped break these cases out into the open twelve years ago. "House of Screams" was the first one, dealing mostly with the cop killer Anton Wilson. Another article a few years later dealt with Aaron Patterson and the other men who were also tortured by Burge and his crew.
Although Burge was never found responsible by a police board, he was fired from the police department over the allegations. He now lives in Florida somewhere. A jury found that though Anton Wilson had been tortured (in his law suit against the Chicago Police) and that there was substantial evidence that as many as 75 others had also been tortured by the police (and that's just going back through the Eighties, and not all the way back to when Burge started), that there was not a policy of torture in the CPD. One of those things that's kinda hard to wrap your head around. Then again, after the things I saw and the stories I heard, I wouldn't put anything past the CPD.
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:25
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quote:
Originally posted by Chris 62
I never said nor cared what his party was Che.
Wrong is wrong.
Without the rule of law, society does not exsist. |
The rule of law was demonstrably and repeatedly perverted and flouted by prosecutors and police.
quote:
If innocent men have been convicted, the APPEALS COURTS exsist to correct this. |
Appeals courts do not normally consider new evidence, or questions of fact. They exist to resolve questions of law. The appellate courts in Illinois in many cases simply ignored the claims of prisoners who were later exonerated.
quote:
If they don't work, fix them, not ignore nearly 150 trial case decisions. |
Once the system was shown to be systematically tainted with more men shown to be not guilty at all (not simply guilty of non-capital murder, but outright not guilty) than were executed, how many death sentences do you carry out that were processed through that tainted system while what needs to be fixed and how is debated for years? How many innocent men do you risk executing, so you can satisfy some people's desire for blood in return for blood?
Meanwhile, with a system so demonstrably defective, how many millions of taxpayer dollars and how many additional years of appeals do you pay for while every inmate challenges his conviction repeatedly, on the same basis as those who were freed?
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I also think it's time that "pardons" be removed from elected officials, this is yet another example of the misuse of this power (Clinton was another). |
Yeah, better that we fry 17 innocent men and saved the state the embarassment of demonstrating how flawed it's criminal justice system is. 
If justice was denied here, the responsibility is squarely on those charged with carrying it out, who instead chose to forcibly extract false confessions, lie about how they were obtained, (or simply look the other way), tamper with evidence, suppress evidence favorable to the defense, and otherwise obstruct justice.
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:25
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I'm not debating what he did. I still have mixed feelings.
I'm just questioning his motives.
The article in the Tribune this morning summarizes his term quite well.
**************
SPRINGFIELD -- As George Ryan campaigned for governor in 1998, the chant from the chorus of lobbyists, special interests and his long list of political friends and cronies was low-key but incessant.
"All we need is four years with George," they said as they raised the cash, cut the deals and assembled the machinery to propel him to the pinnacle of his elected career.
And four years was all they got--in part because of them, because of their willingness to take advantage of Ryan's uncompromising loyalty to those who courted him during his slow but steady rise in elected office.
At noon Monday, Ryan's 37-year public career comes to an end, not coincidentally with the first inauguration in three decades of a Democratic governor, Rod Blagojevich.
But Ryan can't go quietly. It's not his nature. He gained international attention--adoration from some, contempt from others--for his decision over the weekend to empty Illinois' Death Row.
He left the state budget in shambles and his Republican Party in disarray. At the same time, Ryan salted the state payroll with dozens of his allies whose appointments will extend long into the new administration.
But the main reason Ryan can't go away quietly is that he will be hounded by publicity for as long as federal prosecutors look to bring to justice every person they believe illegally profited from his time in government. Only they know where that may lead.
Ryan chose to retire after one term, but he had little choice. It isn't how or when he really wanted to leave the governor's office and the lavish perks he reveled in--the posh planes and vans, the drivers and bodyguards at his beck and call, the Executive Mansion where he hosted parties, sipped cocktails and puffed cigars while holding court in the wood-paneled library.
And there's the power, repressed and hindered for so long as he sat in the legislature, then the lieutenant governor's chair and then the secretary of state's office, watching others flex their clout as governor until he finally got the job.
In a backhanded way, Ryan is exiting with a mandate. A recent Tribune/WGN-Ch. 9 poll showed six of every 10 voters had an unfavorable opinion of him--a stunning thumbs down as Ryan's credibility was sapped by a federal corruption probe into a long list of friends and former top aides that edged ever closer to him.
The federal probe proved to be all-consuming, overshadowing significant achievements such as the costly rebuilding of the state's basic infrastructure--its roads, bridges, rails and sewers.
Even now, as Ryan is lauded as a visionary by capital punishment foes around the world for making a dynamic turnaround from decades of support for the death penalty, others greeted his decision with cynicism.
Ryan is leaving office under such a cloud that his motives for commuting the sentences of all Death Row inmates will be debated for years to come. Was it rooted in personal conviction, or merely an attempt to add at least a little varnish to a badly marred legacy?
Such debates are of little concern to Ryan. As his political career disintegrated, Ryan gave up worrying about how he was perceived by the voters who had soured on him. Clearly bitter, he grew increasingly gruff and uncaring about how they would react to what he said and did.
For some reason, nothing evinced that disdain more than the annual Illinois State Fair, where governors by tradition have partaken in folksy stunts to impress the crowds.
"I'm just going to be me," he declared once at the fair. "I don't stand on my head. I don't do flips in the air. I'm not a tightrope walker. I'm not an adagio dancer. So, I don't know what you want me to do."
His predecessor, Jim Edgar, rode a horse to mark the fair's opening. Before him, Jim Thompson careened down the Giant Slide.
But Ryan didn't need the Giant Slide. As governor, that became his political career.
Throwback
George Homer Ryan Sr.'s immersion in hardball, take-no-prisoner politics occurred in Kankakee County, where Republicans for decades dictated who would get city, county and state jobs in area facilities. When Ryan joined the family pharmacy in the early 1960s, he and his brother, Tom, dispensed pills and helped customers out front, while friendly doctors held card games in a backroom.
Back then, Kankakee County's Republican power was held by state Sen. Ed McBroom, the GOP chairman, a master at mixing business and patronage politics. For a small janitorial job on the public payroll, the tradeoff was buying a toaster from one of McBroom's hardware stores. For a good job at the Manteno Mental Health Center, the price was a car bought at McBroom's dealership. Sometimes, McBroom would have a new car driven to Manteno and would tell the state jobholder it was time to trade up.
McBroom took a liking to the Ryans, installing George as his campaign manager and helping Tom become Kankakee mayor.
George Ryan always called McBroom "Boss" and dutifully followed his instructions. That helped Ryan get on the County Board in 1966 and later to become its chairman. In 1972, McBroom helped Ryan capture a seat in the Illinois House.
The culture of all-encompassing political control didn't bother Ryan. It was the way things were done. Local players sought to get close to McBroom and Ryan so that they, too, could get a piece of the clout. It was those types of people, whom Ryan considered friends, that followed him throughout his career.
As Ryan ascended the political ladder, dealing with those who had clout and those who wanted it, his mission became an effort to try to fix things.
To U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, the term "fix" has one connotation. "For the better part of a decade in Illinois, when it came to contracts and leases in the secretary of state's office, the fix was in for a price," Fitzgerald said in May in announcing the indictments of two members of Ryan's inner circle.
But when Ryan used the word, "fix" was not a pejorative. It was a political idiom that simply meant to "take care of."
"Fix" a problem like a flawed death penalty system or the Hillside Strangler expressway bottleneck in the western suburbs. "Fix" things to make sure that a friend was extended every benefit in getting a state contract or a lease. "Fix" the crumbling streets and sewers--and facilitate a parade of pork-barrel projects back to the districts of legislators. "Fix" a job that a lawmaker, Republican or Democrat, wanted to give to a close ally in hopes of being able to call in a future political chit.
To Ryan, that creed is pure politics. For him, there was nothing wrong with wielding power to help friends.
During his time as secretary of state--from 1991 to 1999--Ryan would routinely turn his executive office in the State Capitol into something resembling an old-time supper club to entertain friends, lobbyists and legislators. At times, while lawmakers would toil in the House and Senate chambers, select invitees to Ryan's inner sanctum would share cigars, conversation, cocktails and catered food while a big-screen TV was tuned to the Bulls.
Ever present were Larry Warner, businessman, insurance adjuster and bank director who has pleaded not guilty to federal charges of extorting contracts with the help of a "high-ranking" secretary of state official; Manny Hoffman, the former state representative and ex-Cook County Republican chairman; Arthur "Ron" Swanson, a former state legislator who could pocket a $1.7 million brokerage fee if Ryan's controversial plan to have the state buy a Springfield building complex goes through; and Pete Peters, a former member of Ryan's leadership team in the House who for a time was a top adviser in the governor's office.
Sometimes the group would dine in Chicago at Lino's or Riva's or Tavern on Rush. Occasionally joining them was Donald Udstuen, a longtime GOP strategist and former top official with the state physician's lobby who has pleaded guilty to contract fraud and is cooperating with federal investigators.
It was in settings such as these, gathered around a table with his "kitchen cabinet," that Ryan agreed to Udstuen's suggestion that Corinne Wood, a first-term moderate legislator from Lake Forest, should be his running mate for governor.
But Ryan shared a damaging trait with other political leaders of the past by fancying himself as a big-picture guy who left the details to his staff. He preferred the ceremonial duties of making speeches, passing out oversize checks and backslapping with local officials rather than toiling in the nitty-gritty of policy making.
"George has never been a detail man," said former Republican Senate President James "Pate" Philip of Wood Dale.
Ryan reserved the greatest trust and dependence for Scott Fawell, his former chief of staff in the secretary of state's office and the manager of his campaign for governor, whom he considered almost a son. Fawell has pleaded not guilty to federal racketeering charges stemming from his tenure as a top Ryan aide and opening arguments in his trial are to begin this week.
For those who know Ryan intimately, his inattention to detail had been viewed as a potentially saving grace as the federal investigation into corruption swirled closer to him. At least some had viewed it that way--until prosecutors in the Fawell case last month alleged Ryan knew about the shredding of campaign documents before federal agents could get to them.
Scandal
No one realized it at the time, but the beginning of the end of Ryan's political career began while he was still on his way up. The seminal event took place on Nov. 8, 1994--the same day he won a second term as secretary of state--on a stretch of Interstate Highway 94 outside of Milwaukee.
Ricardo Guzman, who prosecutors later said was one of dozens of unqualified truckers who had gotten licenses through bribes paid to Ryan underlings, couldn't understand warnings over his trucker's radio that a metal mudflap-taillight assembly was loose on his rig. The part broke free and sheared into the gas tank of a minivan driven by Rev. Duane "Scott" Willis.
The mini-van burst into flames and killed six of his children in an accident that came to symbolize the tragic consequences of Illinois' licenses-for-bribes scandal. Much of the bribe money was used to buy political fundraising tickets to benefit Ryan.
More than 50 people have been convicted in Operation Safe Road, a probe that federal authorities announced in October 1998, just weeks before Ryan's election as governor.
At the time, then-U.S. Atty. Scott Lassar gave Ryan political cover by declaring that the Republican was not a target of the investigation, and Ryan went on to a narrow win. Lassar's successor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is not willing to say that anymore.
But what began as a probe into high-pressure selling of campaign fundraising tickets has broadened significantly to include allegations that political allies and high-ranking officials in Ryan's secretary of state's office--potentially including Ryan himself--profited from the wide-open nature of the office when he ran it.
Ryan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
"I apologize to the people of this state because it happened on my watch and the responsibility is mine," Ryan once said. "This case has contradicted everything else I tried to do as secretary of state. I thought I had a pretty good record there as secretary of state."
Ryan made the comment barely a year into his term as governor. It came as Dean Bauer, a longtime friend and former Kankakee police chief, whose job was to root out corruption as inspector general in the secretary of state's office, said he expected to be indicted. Among the charges Bauer faced was blocking a probe into how Guzman got his license.
Steadily, federal prosecutors have climbed a ladder of alleged corruption that included indictments of Fawell and several others in Ryan's "kitchen cabinet."
Prosecutors alleged they were involved in elaborate schemes that included defrauding taxpayers by having state employees do political work on state time, contract extortion, kickbacks and money laundering--all as part of the operations of the secretary of state's office.
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:25
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Continued*******
Not only were his close friends indicted but so was Ryan's campaign organization, the first time in U.S. history a political committee has been charged with racketeering.
Though Ryan, himself, has not been charged, the government alleges he knew that documents likely to be sought by federal investigators were being shredded; that he understood that secretary of state employees did political work on state time; and that he vacationed for free in Jamaica at the estate of a businessman who received a lucrative state lease.
Before it reached his inner circle, Ryan contended the scandal was only an outgrowth of a long tradition of petty corruption in the secretary of state's office, where stories abound about slipping a $10 bill into a sun visor to ensure passage of a driver's exam. Bribery, he said, was a lamentable fact of life at Illinois driver's license facilities.
"It was there when I was there, probably going to be there in the future," Ryan said. "It's a part of the culture there, I guess."
But his explanations were less than satisfying.
Rarely contrite and often angry as his political fortunes ebbed with every new indictment, Ryan maintained he knew nothing about the corruption that infested the secretary of state's office and wouldn't have tolerated it if he had.
On Feb. 1, 2000, the day prosecutors announced the indictment of Bauer, a shaken Ryan stepped outside the doorway of the governor's mansion and said: "The chips are going to fall where they may, and wherever the truth may lead it will lead."
Death penalty
Little more than two months into his term as governor, Ryan was filled with unease. On his desk was the death warrant for Andrew Kokoraleis of Villa Park, who was on Death Row for the 1982 mutilation murder of a 21-year-old Elmhurst secretary, Lorraine Borowski.
Throughout the day and night of March 16, 1999, Ryan wavered, troubled by the release days earlier of Death Row inmate Anthony Porter, who had come within 48 hours of execution but was later freed when another man confessed to a double killing.
"It's a very hard personal decision to make," he said of Kokoraleis. "You can talk summarily, like `fry the guy,' but when you're the guy who pushes the plunger, it's a different story."
The indecision was a harbinger of things to come.
Early that day, aides drafted a three-month reprieve for Kokoraleis. Ryan consulted with friends and political leaders. Fawell told Ryan that given the heinous nature of the crime, any vacillation would be hard to justify. "What will happen when a really tough one comes along?" Fawell asked.
"If you agree with the death penalty," Fawell told Ryan, "there is not a better candidate coming down the pike."
By 7 p.m. that night, Ryan had convinced himself Fawell was right. "I had some second thoughts. It just took me some time to come to grips with it," Ryan said. Hours later, Kokoraleis died by lethal injection.
It was the first and last execution to take place during Ryan's administration.
Less than a year later, Ryan imposed a moratorium on executions, citing the exonerations of 13 former Death Row inmates as reason to demand an overhaul of the capital punishment system before anyone else should be put to death.
To be sure, Ryan's decision to halt executions provided him with a diversion from the licenses-for-bribes scandal. With little political support at home, the once rigidly conservative Ryan became the darling of Hollywood activists and social reformers who deemed capital punishment an evil.
Though he never proposed ending the death penalty in Illinois, the more he talked, the closer he edged to it. Asked about Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's federal death sentence, Ryan said, "I couldn't throw the switch on this guy, McVeigh, and he was a terrible guy."
Looking for friends at a time when others were walking away from him, Ryan traveled extensively to discuss the moratorium with death-penalty opponents and was featured prominently on national TV news interviews. True to form, Ryan looked to help his friends.
Even before the report last April of Ryan's special commission on capital punishment, which proposed more than 80 changes to the state's capital punishment system, he said he would review the cases of all condemned inmates. He raised the idea of a "blanket commutation" for all of them as a threat in hoping to spur lawmakers to act on death penalty reforms.
Finally, on Saturday, with only hours remaining in his term, he cleared out Death Row by commuting to life in prison the sentences of 164 condemned inmates and reducing the sentences of three others. He lambasted the legislature for failing to adopt his reforms.
Ryan said the death penalty was the "toughest" public policy issue he had faced. Yet the most consummate dealmaker the state ever had as its governor couldn't get a single reform passed in the General Assembly. It was the one time he didn't want to deal, and it was GOP lawmakers who would not give him what he wanted.
In a lengthy address televised nationally by two major cable news networks, Ryan said something that Illinois residents had already known.
"During my time in public office, I have always reserved my right to change my mind if I believed it to be in the best public interest," Ryan said. He did it when he raised taxes and fees after saying he wouldn't. He did it when he said he opposed expanded gambling and then pushed for a casino in Rosemont craved by his pal Mayor Don Stephens. And he was doing it now on the death penalty, which he voted to reinstate in 1977 as a member of the legislature.
Capital punishment activists cheered Ryan's clemency decision and even touted him for a Nobel Peace Prize. But with Ryan's credibility with the Illinois public already in tatters, its unclear whether his actions Saturday will further the reforms he demanded or undermine attempts to gain political support for them.
Deals
Ryan was first elected to the Illinois House in 1972 and as he rose in the ranks to become Republican leader and, finally, speaker in 1981, he honed the skills and style that would mark the rest of his political career.
With his top administrative assistant, Lynda Long, pouring cocktails in his third-floor Statehouse digs, Ryan would keep one ear cocked to the chatter of friends and lobbyists who used the office like a lounge. The other ear was tuned to the sound of debates and roll calls from the House floor that crackled from an electronic speaker.
Today, the House has 118 members, all kept on a short leash by their leaders. But when Ryan ran the chamber, the House was a rollicking collection of 177 lawmakers elected three to a district and many saw themselves as free agents willing to bargain their vote for a deal. That atmosphere required superb political skills by Ryan to keep his members happy and in line.
Ryan's leadership of the House GOP coincided with the election of Republican Jim Thompson as governor. Thompson's larger-than-life attitude toward the governor's office--luxuriating in the social amenities and leveraging his power to build monuments--left an indelible impression on Ryan.
Thompson was elected to a record four terms as governor, and he picked Ryan to serve as his lieutenant governor for the last two, from 1983 to 1991. When Ryan became governor, he gave Thompson the run of the governor's office and Executive Mansion. That helped Thompson, the head of the Winston & Strawn law firm, in his high-profile, high-billable-hour role as a lobbyist.
Under Ryan, Thompson's Chicago Bears client won approval for a massive, taxpayer-funded overhaul of Soldier Field. Another Thompson client, Blackhawks owner William Wirtz, got a short-lived law to protect his liquor distributing empire. And the former governor's own Build Illinois public works agenda served as a model for Ryan as he launched what he hoped would be his administration's signature, the $12 billion Illinois FIRST program to rebuild highways, bridges, school classrooms, water towers, sewer lines, parks and bike trails.
The politicians loved Ryan for Illinois FIRST but it angered many taxpayers because he raised license plate fees and liquor taxes to pay for it.
The public outrage also intensified because he cut a deal with legislative leaders that authorized a secretive $1.6 billion stash for pet projects of lawmakers. Even as the state's financial situation worsened and Ryan cut services, he and the leaders kept their pork-barrel spigot flowing to bankroll projects such as a statue of Jack Benny in Waukegan and a stained-glass window for a parking deck in Naperville.
A steadfast supporter of a Peotone airport from his days as lieutenant governor, Ryan moved forward with the project by committing tens of millions of state tax dollars to it. But in another case of the deal becoming as important as the issue, Ryan dropped his opposition to new runways at O'Hare International Airport and endorsed Mayor Richard Daley's plans for a massive O'Hare expansion.
Noting in his inaugural address that some considered him "an old-time politician and a dealmaker without principle," Ryan said others would view him as "a skilled negotiator who reconciles divergent interests for the common good."
"Compromise is not a bad word," he said, and political pragmatism virtually always won the day.
The good will that Ryan engendered from the leaders and the rank-and-file members of the General Assembly lasted far longer than what he got from the public. The adulation he received from legislators was bipartisan.
"Did the Democrats kind of lay down on him in the [1998 governor's] election?" Philip asked. "They were helping George if they were doing anything. Why? Because he's made so many friends over the years. He tried to help anybody, whether they were Democrat or Republican, and that's the one redeeming feature of George Ryan."
Ideological evolution
Ryan didn't serve long as House speaker, but enough to attain hero status among conservatives for working to block ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
But the conservative love affair with Ryan cooled with many of his public policy moves.
Espousing a personal belief in "common sense," Ryan clearly evolved as a politician. The same innate pragmatism that led to Ryan's success as a dealmaker eventually led to a revision of his conservative convictions on a variety of social issues, a conversion that began when he backed gun-control as lieutenant governor. Ryan said his guiding principle was a simple matter of fairness.
Was it fair, he would ask, that people were discriminated against because of their sexual preferences? So he pushed for gay-rights legislation.
Was it fair that a rich woman could have an abortion but a poor woman could not? So he vetoed a bill to ban publicly funded abortions.
Was it fair that other nations could trade with communist Cuba but Americans could not? So he traveled to Havana in the fall of 1999 and met with dictator Fidel Castro.
Ryan went to Cuba simply because he could--a trait that would resurface as the unfolding federal investigation made it clear a re-election bid would be folly. Any pretext of political correctness fell by the wayside.
With prosecutors reaching deeper into his inner-circle, what had initially been brusque self-confidence turned into a form of aggressive arrogance. It was as if Ryan had dared federal agents to come after him as he continued to try to cut deals that helped his friends and packed people into jobs that would outlast his tenure.
More and more, Ryan did not care about what he said or did, or what the "people" thought. Last August, on the annual Republican Day at the State Fair, he upbraided GOP leaders for focusing too much on the scandal surrounding him and not enough on extolling his accomplishments as governor.
Ryan also declared he wouldn't take part in the fair's parade. "I don't like parades anyplace--whether it's the State Fair parade or it's the Kankakee County parade," Ryan said. "I've never figured out why people like to sit along the curb all day and watch firetrucks go by and politicians. But they do."
Endgame
George Ryan's legacy, in the nearsighted view of immediate history, is clouded by one unanswerable question, "What if?"
What if Ryan had played a more hands-on role in preventing illegal activities during his tenure as secretary of state? What if Ryan had made an undeniable commitment for zero tolerance for corruption? What if Ryan had been able to lead a governor's office unhindered by the federal investigation?
Arguably without the federal probe, Ryan would have been a formidable candidate for re-election, even with the deals he cut and the taxes and fees he raised. With his close relationship to Daley and his friendship among leading Democrats, it's doubtful that Ryan would have faced a significant challenge.
But there are no "what ifs;" only "what is."
In a public policy sense, Ryan was one of the state's most successful governors, winning bipartisan support for proposals that helped rebuild a crumbling public works infrastructure, pumped more money into public schools, toughened sentences on those who commit gun-related crimes and provided a rational understanding for trying to fix a broken capital-punishment system.
From a public relations sense, however, Ryan's tenure as governor was a disaster.
Acting crotchety and imperial, dubbed "Mr. Potter" after the movie villain by Republicans for his sour demeanor in his final months in office, Ryan found out just how transitory were the political friendships and alliances he had always valued.
In April of last year, Ryan placed a condolence call to Udstuen, who had quit his job with the doctor's lobby and dropped his position as a board member of the Metra commuter rail service after federal investigators seized records from the agency. Months later, Ryan was surprised to learn that Udstuen, cooperating with federal prosecutors, had taped the call.
Public attitudes toward Ryan became so poisoned that even if he had found a cure for an incurable disease, the cynical voice would suggest that he was only trying to divert attention from scandal. Or, the public would argue, the cure would find its way only to Ryan's cronies.
Even in the early days of his administration, when he embarked on a road tour of the state to try to repair his image, the most memorable impression was in seeing Ryan's face dripping with goo after an angry young Carbondale woman tossed a pie at him.
With no way to win, Ryan looked for personal redemption in other ways, such as the time not long ago when he ordered troopers to stop his van along a Chicago street to pick up a homeless woman and her child. He had both of them fed and put up in a hotel for the night.
Ryan followed the fundamental rule of politicians of his era, to bring home the bacon. From his Illinois FIRST program, alone, he delivered nearly $80 million in projects to Kankakee County--police cars, playground equipment, wastewater equipment, computers and library books, bridges and road improvements. He also broke ground on a $100 million women's prison in the county's impoverished Pembroke Township.
To show their thanks, county officials last year held a party for him--at the George Ryan Gymnasium at Kankakee Community College.
Now, denied a quiet retirement by the ongoing investigation, Ryan heads back to the family home in Kankakee with few real friends untouched by scandal and embittered by how he was treated by the public and media. He faces the loss of his retirement nest egg, a multimillion-dollar campaign fund, which prosecutors are trying to seize under federal anti-racketeering statutes.
With the investigation continuing and prosecutors making it obvious they have Ryan in their sights, no one knows what lies ahead for a man who at times in his career has been held in the highest esteem and in the lowest repute.
"If you want to know what something means, talk to the people," Ryan said on his first day as governor. "They can separate right from wrong, and they have an inherent common sense and a great sense of fair play and evenhandedness.
"When my time comes," he added, on a day so brimming with promise, "the people of Illinois will decide and judge my place and my legacy in history."
As he prepares to leave office, it's abundantly clear that the people of Illinois may not be Ryan's final judge.
Copyright © 2003, Chicago Tribune
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Traianvs
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Belgium, land of plenty (corruption)
Jan 2000
time: 06:25
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Oh eh we have to read through all that?? 
Btw Chris: Laws exist to give our society a certain structure, so there is no total anarchy, but sometimes we have to act humane and be supple with our laws. Yes there are laws, but in some cases where it is so OBVIOUS that many people are condamned innocent, it should be possible that something like this happens in order to investigate the whole matter, at least giving time to clear out some business, like finding real evidence... many ppl in death row don't have real strong evidence against them anyway, ppl just want to find a victim on which they can project their anger!!
Laws change through time so laws are not absolute: I believe they can be overruled in exceptional circumstances such as these!
I agree with che that it's better to get everyone life sentence (hell i am even against death penalty, unless the criminals prefer death over life sentence of course) than to just butcher ppl without double checking whether he was guilty or not (I have seen documentaries on TV that report of the killing of moronic black people that turned out innocent after all... they just couldn't defend themselves well) I would certainly like to prevent that kind of injustice!!!
Btw DanS: If you would hold a vote... the vote would be negative for Ryan. Why? Because most ppl don't even know about these innocents being in death row..They would make their vote be influenced by their emotions....
They just don't know enough of the cases to be able to vote on this (like you and me, we don't know all the aspects of the individual cases, how can YOU then say that he's guilty or not!!!).
Democracy is a great thing, but sometimes it's just not appropriate.. seeing most ppl in the US vote on Bush already shows that most ppl don't have any clue what mess that wacko is creating in the world for example..
some of you guys are too harsh and precise, rightwing capitalists 
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HershOstropoler
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quote:
Originally posted by rah
I'm not debating what he did. I still have mixed feelings.
I'm just questioning his motives.
The article in the Tribune this morning summarizes his term quite well...
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Why is he being prosecuted for that stuff ? Doesn't sound like he did anything unusual....
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rah
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Apolyton Prince of Moderators, Master of Reason
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Lord of the Ferrets
Jan 1970
time: 23:25
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quote:
Originally posted by The Mad Viking
Pardoned inmates do not.
Given that he is likely to endure equal portions of praise and condemnation, it seems unlikely that he did it for his legacy. It looks like an act of conscience to me. Contrition, maybe. I don't know the guy at all, but even people who do many bad things can still be worthy of praise for good acts. |
Without this, there would be NOTHING that he was likely to be praised for. To some people though, this will be a positive legacy, so I'm willing to bet on EGO.
HershOstropoler, yes nothing unusual for a corrupt politician. It's becoming obvious that he oversaw the most corrupt Secretary of State department in the history of the state. He knew about it, lied about it and encouraged the cover up. (at least those will likely be the charges) Lord knows what we don't know about what he did as governor. (besides leaving the state Republican party in a shambles) But yes, nothing unusual at all. 
RAH
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HershOstropoler
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Well, what was illegal about it ?
quote:
"Fix" a problem like a flawed death penalty system or the Hillside Strangler expressway bottleneck in the western suburbs. "Fix" things to make sure that a friend was extended every benefit in getting a state contract or a lease. "Fix" the crumbling streets and sewers--and facilitate a parade of pork-barrel projects back to the districts of legislators. "Fix" a job that a lawmaker, Republican or Democrat, wanted to give to a close ally in hopes of being able to call in a future political chit. |
Are there now limits on the games US politicians can play with public procurement ?
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13-01-2003 11:28
from me.
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