Some jail bait for kittie?

December 17, 2003 11:22 AM

Wag the dog. No fat cats can save Gov. Ryan now. An update on the MIFI hero former IL Gov. Jim Ryan and perhaps why he issued a death penal moratorium in 2000. [more inside]
posted by Bag Man (19 comments total)

My fav: Ryan, 69, a Republican known worldwide as a leading critic of the death penalty, gradually became the focus of a corruption investigation that began even before his 1998 election as governor.
posted by Bag Man at 11:24 AM on December 17, 2003

why he issued a death penal (sic) moratorium
Didn't see anything in the article about him accepting bribes from convicted murderers, homicidal maniacs or even defense attorneys (best known for political contributions to Democrats only). So, WTF, Bag Man?
posted by wendell at 11:38 AM on December 17, 2003

bribes exchanged for licenses for unqualified truck drivers
Oh, there are the homocidal maniacs...
posted by wendell at 11:39 AM on December 17, 2003

Corruption in Illinois! Not just for Democrats anymore.

(they're gonna execute him . . . )
posted by hackly_fracture at 11:40 AM on December 17, 2003

bribes exchanged for licenses for unqualified truck drivers
Oh, there are the homocidal maniacs...

I think the argument is that Ryan was a sitting duck from day one, and thus had the political space to actually act his conscience. It didn't matter if he rendered himself "unelectable," because they don't have elections in jail. And while underqualified truck drivers are not murderers they did kill a number of people on Illinois' highways.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 11:45 AM on December 17, 2003

That's former Governor "George" Ryan. "Jim" lost in the race for Attorney General last fall. If that wasn't confusing enough, "Jack Ryan" is currently running in the Republican Senate primary.
posted by coudal at 11:48 AM on December 17, 2003

The joke, of course, was that he was saving his own skin with the moratorium.
posted by goethean at 12:07 PM on December 17, 2003

Then I don't get it - is he indicted on a capital charge?
posted by nicwolff at 12:27 PM on December 17, 2003

This is a happy day. I hope he rats out Mayor Daley on his way down.
posted by thirteen at 12:45 PM on December 17, 2003

That's former Governor "George" Ryan. "Jim" lost in the race for Attorney General last fall. If that wasn't confusing enough, "Jack Ryan" is currently running in the Republican Senate primary.
Not to be confused with Jack Ryan in the Tom Clancy books... or Meg Ryan... or Private Ryan... or Jeri Ryan... or Nolan Ryan...
posted by wendell at 12:49 PM on December 17, 2003

the point was that many of us here in illinois took the moritorium as a transparant attempt to dazzle us so with his final act of generosity and Goodness that we would forget about the corruption and there'd be no call for his indictment. or if there were, he'd get a break for being such a Good Guy in the end.
posted by crush-onastick at 1:37 PM on December 17, 2003

I wonder why this isn't on Drudge Report.
posted by the fire you left me at 1:40 PM on December 17, 2003

More information here...sorry about the mistakes in the thread (wanted to get it out fast).

What crush-onastick said.
posted by Bag Man at 2:09 PM on December 17, 2003

I lived in Illinois at the time of the trucking scandal, and I find it hard to believe that Ryan actually thought he had any chance of getting off because of a political concession. Obviously, the guy's a crook, but I just can't see the death penalty thing as anything other than a guy with nothing left to lose doing something he knows is right, without having to care about the political fallout.
posted by Ignatius J. Reilly at 2:22 PM on December 17, 2003

For people out there unfamiliar with the wingnut argument, it goes like this:

George Ryan stopped the death penalty in Illinois not because the state was forced to free between 15 and 20 innocent men that had been wrongfully locked up on death row, but because he somehow thought it would help him defend against political corruption charges.

You see -- by clearing death row, Ryan enraged many members of his own party, thus ensuring that the Republican federal prosecutor would never ever think of indicting him . . .
posted by Mid at 2:36 PM on December 17, 2003

I may be wrong, but doesn't he support the death penalty? He was just critical of how it was administered by the justice system. I thought I remember him challenging the legislature to correct the system. His actions in his final day in office were because the legislature didn't meet his challenge, or so he said. I dunno, everything is a blur....
posted by Eekacat at 4:01 PM on December 17, 2003

You see -- by clearing death row, Ryan enraged many members of his own party, thus ensuring that the Republican federal prosecutor would never ever think of indicting him . . .

That's not true....the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was "recommended" for the job by Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican maverick who had feuded with Ryan and the GOP establishment in Illinois. (By tradition, the highest ranking Senator of the President's party is usually allowed to nominate U.S. Attorneys.) Patrick Fitzgerald (no relation to Peter) was a New York prosecutor who, it is believed, was brought in because he had no ties to Ryan or the local Republicans and had no political ambition in Illinois. The prior prosecutor, Scott Lassar (a Democrat) actually said that Ryan was not a target of the investigation.

The indictment actually doesn't really arise out of the original focus of the investigation, which was the sale of driver's licenses when Ryan was Sec. of State. It is old-fashioned political corruption -- the granting of state contracts for money and "political contributions."

The death penalty issue was (and remains) a big problem in Illinois, but I agree that Ryan commuted the death row sentences because he wanted to be remembered for something more than corruption and scandal.
posted by Durwood at 7:54 PM on December 17, 2003

The usual term of art here is "legacy kitbag", much used during Clinton's waning days. Durwood's comments are helpful because the original post was so poorly worded (sorry, Bag Man) that many people probably skipped it out of pure confusion. Note that "getting it out fast" is almost a guarantee of a substandard post. Anyway.

There is much irony here, and it only starts with all the friggin' Ryans and Fitzgeralds somehow involved. None of them are related to each other, and honestly, outside of certain Chicago neighborhoods, there aren't that many of them in Illinois! The biggest is simply that the election of Ryan in 1998 occurred after the initial revelation of the bribes-for-licenses scandal -- but prior to the election only low-level functionaries were implicated. Ryan was seen as perhaps insufficiently supervisive of his department, and the electioneering by state employees on state time is an "honorable" tradition in Illinois. But the real bombshell happened when the 1994 -- 1994! -- accident that burned up a family in a minivan (six kids died, the parents survived) was found to be a direct result (technically it was a freak accident, but one can never know whether it could have been avoided with a truly accredited, English-speaking truck driver at the wheel) of the scandal, when the driver was found to have received his commercial license fraudulently. (This driver was Mexican-American, but many of the others are Eastern European; there was quite a revolving door running through, among other places, Florida driver training schools.) I've known since 1999, then, that someday George Ryan would pay for this sin. Along the way, after literally years of dogging them, two of his closest aides at SoS were convicted, including his inspector general and chief of staff. It was pretty clear the noose was tightening.

So while I would love to think highly of Ryan for the death-penalty moratorium, it was clearly a self-serving move politically. Ryan is a moderate Republican -- oddly enough the "downstate" Democratic opponent in '98 ran to his right on gun control and abortion -- but opposition to the death penalty wasn't one of his watchwords. So he did the right thing, certainly, but for the wrong reasons. I doubt he expected it would ultimately save him; in fact I believe he knew that one day, metaphorically, he would hang, and perhaps he was now sufficiently cognizant of the position of those on death row. At the most basic level he was simply hungry for differently-worded headlines.
posted by dhartung at 10:25 PM on December 17, 2003

Personally, I don't give a damn why Ryan instituted the moratorium -- it was one of the best, gutsiest things any US politician has done in a long time and gave much-needed impetus to the anti-death-penalty movement. Not that that means he shouldn't be tarred and feathered for his sins.

sorry about the mistakes in the thread (wanted to get it out fast)

Gee, you think there's a connection? Or, what dhartung said.
posted by languagehat at 7:49 AM on December 18, 2003