Appeals court refuses Ryan bond, says must go to prison next week
'End of the line' for Ryan, judge says
Former Gov. George Ryan is likely to head to prison next week after the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his request to continue to remain free on bond while he appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ryan still has a remote chance of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to extend his bond, and his lawyers were expected to make that request soon.
Ryan still has a remote chance of getting the U.S. Supreme Court to extend his bond, and his lawyers were expected to make that request soon.
Barring success there, the Kankakee Republican is to report to prison Nov. 7.
(Sun-Times file)
Barring success there, the Kankakee Republican is to report to prison Nov. 7.
In a opinion issued Wednesday, Judge Diane Wood wrote that although Ryan and his co-defendant, GOP businessman Larry Warner, "would undoubtedly like to postpone the day of reckoning as long as they can, they have come to the end of the line as far as this court is concerned.
"The voluminous record here demonstrates that the appellants were guilty of the crimes with which they were charged," Wood wrote.
If he goes to prison, Ryan will become only the third former Illinois governor to serve time behind bars, joining Democrats Otto Kerner, who served 7 months of a three-year term for a racetrack stock scandal, and Dan Walker, who spent 17 months in jail on a seven-year sentence for a bank fraud, perjury and other federal crimes involving an Oak Brook savings and loan he owned.
Ryan was sentenced to 6½ years in prison last year after a political corruption trial for steering state contracts to friends, including Warner, among other misdeeds.
