Man who wanted to be liked

We all knew George Ryan, but each in our own way. Some saw him as a fearless leader, while others saw him as a dishonest man like so many politicians. I saw him in a very different way because of the chances I had to spend time with him.

A story few know happened in late 1972. Sen. Ed McBroom had been defeated by Jerry Joyce for his Illinois State Senate seat. I was a young attorney in town and a cousin of Ed’s. I got a call one afternoon. “Mr. McBroom wants to see you at the garage.”

That meant the McBroom Cadillac agency.

I sat in his office that afternoon, and Ed totally shocked me. “I am not going to wait four years to run for the Senate again. I am going to enter the race for the House seat this year. They have changed the districts for the House. There will be three representatives from each district but only two can be from same party. Would you be willing to run with me?”

For a number of reasons, I thanked him and declined the offer. I had no interest in politics. To my knowledge, he also made the same inquiry to George Ryan. George and I often kidded about that day. How different each of our lives would have been if I had said “yes” first. George and I both were happy with the decisions.

I had known George for several years as he worked in the River Street pharmacy. I watched his brother, Tom, leave the daily grind at the pharmacy to become the mayor of Kankakee. There had to be some envy by the younger brother, but George would not be far behind. He soon ran for the Kankakee County Board and would later become the chairman of that board.

As we all know, that led to higher and higher positions. George was always the one who was eager to help someone, be it politically or just as a friend. He could be stern and be tenderhearted as well.

I knew James Thompson for years, starting as my law school professor. When George moved from the Illinois House to be Thompson’s Lt. Governor, I was pleased for both.

Then there was being the secretary of state, and all went smoothly until an employee of one at the state DMVs accepted a bribe from a man not qualified for a commercial license. The license was issued by this employee. Later there was a collision between that man’s truck and a passenger car resulting in an entire family being massacred.

In truth, the police found that the truck driver had done nothing negligent but was certainly improperly licensed. Most do not and did not know that. The issuer of that license said that he took the bribe so he could make a mandatory contribution to George Ryan’s campaign.

Let’s say that this was true. Would you hold it against George Ryan if the man had robbed a bank or sold drugs to get the money to contribute to Ryan’s campaign? Then Secretary of State Ryan, always denied any connection with the bribe, and no one ever connected him to the event. But it hung over him as a cloud to many as some of those killed were children.

As Governor of Illinois, George made a host of very helpful decisions. It may be that he gave some favoritism to friends, but never was it shown in his trial that he actually profited from any of the favorable events. I attended several days of his trial and was amazed at the conduct in that courtroom.

Both the federal prosecutor and Dan Webb, as George’s attorney, were most capable, but the young judge was awful, as she tried to please everyone with her rulings. Whoever argued a point last seemed to win, so the arguments went on and on. She lost control of her courtroom.

Once the jury commenced deliberation, the alternate jurors were released. They had all been sequestered for the entire trial. The bailiff reported to the judge midway through deliberations that there was one juror who declared to the others that she would never vote guilty.

All of a sudden, in a most bizarre move, the Judge pulled the woman from the deliberation, said that she found that the juror had lied about some traffic tickets during voir dire, and dismissed her. Then she brought in an alternate who had been allowed to go home, read all the news reports of the trial, talk to friends about it, and then added this woman to the otherwise completely sequestered jurors.

A guilty verdict on all 18 counts followed.

On appeal, two justices who had never personally tried a jury trial in their careers, affirmed the verdict saying that in any jury trial there will be a “few mistakes,” but the overwhelming evidence sustained the verdict. The third justice, a seasoned trial attorney before taking the bench, in his dissent wrote, “A few mistakes?” He then went on to bullet point 21 mistakes that the trial judge had made.

Need I say more?

Later, after Ryan had entered the moratorium against the death penalty, I was talking to him about that decision. One might remember that one of the 167 inmates he commuted from the death penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole, was the killer of George’s own next-door neighbor.

He shared with me that when he was first in office as governor, a father came to him begging for his son’s life, who was due to be executed, be spared. George did not commute the sentence and within days the son was executed. With tears in his eyes, George told me that he could never excuse that decision, and that is what led to his moratorium of the death penalty in Illinois.

This was the George Ryan I knew and admired. May he rest in peace with his loving wife.