Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan

ILLINOIS (USA): EX-GOVERNOR RYAN WANTS TO CONTINUE ANTI-DEATH PENALTY WORK

July 3, 2014: Ex-Illinois governor George Ryan now is free to speak after a year of federal supervision that followed his more than 5 years in prison.
The 80-year-old spoke in his 1st interviews since his 2013 release from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. The interviews with his hometown Kankakee newspaper, The Daily Journal, and the Chicago Sun-Times also coincided with the formal end on Wednesday of the Republican's supervised release. "I don't have to get permission to do anything anymore," he told The Daily Journal.
Despite his 5 years behind bars, Ryan said he had few regrets in life. But one, he said, was his decision in his 1st year as governor not to intercede and stop the 1999 execution of Andrew Kokoraleis. Soon after, Ryan placed a moratorium on executions and that eventually led Illinois to abolish the death penalty by law in 2011. "I regretted killing that Greek fella," Ryan said. Kokoraleis, the last prisoner executed in the state, was killed by lethal injection for the rape, kidnapping and murder of a 21-year-old woman, Lorraine Borowski. Citing systemic flaws, Ryan declared the moratorium a year later. In 2003, he cleared death row. Ryan says he'd like to re-engage with the cause he left behind when he went to prison in 2007 - campaigning for the end of the death penalty in the U.S. "Americans should come to their senses," Ryan said this week, in an hourlong interview at his kitchen table.
At his home in Kankakee, south of Chicago, the Republican, 80, held forth on capital punishment, the state of American politics and the criminal justice system - though not the difficult details of his own corruption case. He said he'd like to spend some time on the national circuit to encourage other states to follow Illinois' lead in abolishing capital punishment. That move came in 2011 and stemmed from Ryan's decision to clear death row in 2003. While he was treated as a champion by death penalty opponents at the time, he acknowledged some public figures now may have trouble openly associating with him. "I'm an ex-convict," he said. "People tend to frown on that." Ryan, who was governor from 1999 to 2003, was indicted in 2003 and convicted in 2006 on multiple corruption counts, including racketeering and tax fraud. He said he does not plan to discuss the details of the criminal case - to which he always maintained his innocence - though he might in an autobiography he is writing. He lashed out at the U.S. justice system, calling it "corrupt" and bluntly contending that the fervor with which he was prosecuted was due in part to his nationally prominent campaign to end the death penalty. "It put a target on my back when I did what I did," he said, adding that even prison guards derided and mocked him. "It certainly didn't win me any favor with the federal authorities."
Ryan also addressed the deaths of 6 Willis family children in an accident involving a trucker who apparently bought his license when Ryan was secretary of state. The crash helped spark the Ryan investigation. "It was a terrible, heartbreaking thing to have happened to the Willis family," Ryan told the Sun-Times. "Lura Lynn and I put them in our daily prayers then and that continues to this day." (Source: Associated Press, 03/07/2014)