AP via Sun-Times:

Ryan lawyers: 'Avalanche of errors' doomed him

December 15, 2006
George Ryan's lawyers asked an appeals court Thursday to throw out the former governor's racketeering and fraud conviction, claiming it was the result of "an avalanche of errors" by the trial judge.

Attorneys for Ryan and co-defendant Larry Warner said the jury that found them guilty following a six-month trial last April was prejudiced by serious mistakes on the part of U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer.

"The District Court's singular desire to bring this case to a verdict led it to commit an avalanche of errors that deprived Warner and Ryan of a fair trial before an impartial jury," they said in a 90-page brief.

"These errors undermined the legitimacy of the verdicts, which were contaminated by outside influence and divorced from meaningful deliberation," they said in urging a new trial for Ryan and Warner.

In wording their appeal, Ryan's lawyers stole a line from another recent corruption case. When federal appeals Judge Richard A. Posner overturned the conviction of former Chicago city Treasurer Miriam Santos, he said the trial judge had committed "a veritable avalanche of errors."

Ryan's lawyers pounded away at the same arguments they made when they sought approval for him to remain free on bond pending the outcome of his appeal.

Ryan was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison for steering state contracts and leases to Warner and other political friends, using state employees and taxpayer dollars to run his campaigns and covering up a fundraising scandal in which drivers licenses were traded for cash.

Pallmeyer ordered him to report to prison Jan. 4. The appeals court granted him an unusual appeal bond, allowing him to remain free until it decides the complex legal issues stemming from the trial.

Ryan's attorneys focused their appeal heavily on Pallmeyer's decision to replace two jurors with alternates eight days into deliberations, after it was discovered they had police records they'd failed to mention on pretrial questionnaires.

One of the replaced jurors, whose views were favorable to the defense, was pressured by a fellow juror who brought unauthorized and improper legal research into the deliberations, the defense attorneys noted.

When it was discovered that some additional jurors had been in scrapes with the police but failed to mention them on their questionnaires, Pallmeyer declined to replace them as she had the other two, they said.

"And because of the District Court's unprecedented decisions, the jury that ultimately found Warner and Ryan guilty was very different from the one charged with determining their fate at submission," the appeal said.

"Significantly the reconstituted jury did not include a known defense holdout juror removed under an arbitrary standard," it said. "The District Court itself recognized that 'it might very well be' that its unprecedented decisions related to this jury would warrant reversal."

Pallmeyer refused to grant Ryan a new trial, saying she did not see "any great harm." The appeal recalled a remark by the judge that "if I am wrong, it will not be the first time I was reversed, and I am not afraid to be reversed."

The appeal brief said: "Indeed these convictions must be reversed."

AP