From the Daily Herald
High drama, high stakes in trial 
 
While prosecutors hone their strategy, Ryan confident he"ll prevail in corruption case 
 
By Eric Krol and Rob Olmstead 
Daily Herald Staff Writers 
Posted Sunday, September 18, 2005 
 
They’ll pick a jury Monday for former Gov. George Ryan’s corruption case, unfurling the high drama of the state’s fourth chief executive in 40 years to face charges and placing the very nature of Illinois’ political system on trial. 
 
It’s the culmination of a game of legal poker in which each side has called the other’s hand. Ryan, true to his word, didn’t take a plea deal, and federal prosecutors apparently never offered one. 
 
Going to trial is a big-stakes gamble for rising national star U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald. His office is trying to cap a seven-year, multimillion-dollar investigation into political corruption sparked by the deaths of six children in a fiery crash caused by an unqualified trucker who paid a bribe to get a license. All told, 73 people have been convicted in Operation Safe Road since 1998. Fitzgerald now is trying to convict the man he says was the kingpin of corruption with what some legal observers argue is a less-than-airtight case. 
 
Ryan’s chips also are all on the table. At risk is his main source of income — a $191,000-a-year state pension — and, at age 71, the prospect that guilty verdicts on the most serious charges could bring what amounts to a life sentence. Not to mention his very legacy, or what’s left of it after years of constant scandal headlines. 
 
He’s well aware of what’s on the line, and, at least publicly, not worried. 
 Former Gov. George Ryan is going on trial for alleged corruption, beginning with jury selection today. He faces 18 counts, including racketeering. 
 
“I'm glad to get on with it. I feel confident about it,” Ryan told the Daily Herald earlier this month. “I feel good about it. I’ll be glad to get it by me.” 
 
Together, Ryan and co-defendant Lawrence E. Warner are charged with 22 counts of racketeering, mail fraud, perjury, extortion, income tax fraud and money laundering, mostly involving Ryan’s tenure as Illinois secretary of state from January 1991 to January 1999. Fitzgerald himself summed up his case the week before Christmas 2003 when he announced the indictment: “Basically, the state of Illinois was for sale, for his (Ryan’s) friends and family at times.” 
 
Ryan’s star-studded defense team, led by former U.S. Attorney Dan Webb, argues prosecutors “cobbled together a number of unrelated, innocent acts” to indict politics-as-usual in Illinois. 
 
“The government does not have a single witness who will testify that George Ryan ever received a corrupt dollar — not one,” Ryan’s lawyers wrote in a recent court filing for the case. 
 
The case 
 
Ryan faces 18 of the 22 counts, the most serious of which is a charge of racketeering. Prosecutors allege Ryan used the secretary of state’s office to help Warner and others steer fat contracts to hand-picked clients and in return took money and benefits for himself, his family and his campaign fund. 
 
While Webb promises the government won’t have anyone testifying that Ryan took money, prosecutors do have the racketeering law itself on their side, a statute originally created to combat mob crime. 
 
The difficult part, legal observers say, is getting a jury to buy their theory that an organized conspiracy, in this case to steer contracts, was going on. If the jury accepts that argument, however, prosecutors need only prove two crimes out of a laundry list to make the racketeering charge stick. 
 
Juries already have bought Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick Collins’ racketeering theory in previous cases against Ryan’s campaign fund and his former chief of staff, Scott Fawell. 
 
Speaking of which, Fawell, the now-jailed new generation of a DuPage County political dynasty, will be perhaps the most important witness at the trial. 
 
“From the indictment, it (the case) doesn’t look very strong. Now I have no idea what Fawell is going to say when he takes the stand,” said Leonard Cavise, a DePaul University professor of law specializing in criminal law and evidence. 
 
What prosecutors have indicated that Fawell, Ryan’s right-hand man in the secretary of state’s office, will say is that Ryan knew about much of the alleged corruption swirling about the office, including the inside information that was being given to Warner on state contracts. Fawell told prosecutors he and Ryan talked about the need to keep Warner “happy,” according to one prosecution court filing. 
 
One of the other top witnesses is Donald Udstuen, a longtime Ryan adviser and former Metra board member formerly of Crystal Lake. While much of his testimony will point to Warner, it’s also likely to be an integral aspect of the racketeering case against Ryan. 
 
Udstuen, 62, told prosecutors he and Warner cut a deal early on to steer state contracts to their clients, with Udstuen getting a third of the profits. Warner would “take care” of Ryan from his two-thirds share, Udstuen told prosecutors. 
 
One hitch to both Fawell’s and Udstuen’s testimony is that both agreed to cooperate with the government’s case against Ryan as part of plea bargains. Legal experts say that’s not necessarily an impediment, given that prosecutors in courtrooms every day get convictions despite relying on the testimony of people who are far from angels. 
 
“The weakness with direct testimony is some (witnesses) may be lying to save their skin. The weakness with a circumstantial case is that there’s always another explanation” for the evidence presented, said John E. Corkery, vice dean of the John Marshall Law School. 
 
“Most of these (corruption) cases are built on circumstantial evidence. Neither one (direct evidence versus circumstantial evidence) is stronger than the other,” Corkery added. 
 
Beyond the racketeering rap, lesser charges like tax evasion and perjury tend to be easier for prosecutors to prove: Either money was collected and taxes were paid, or taxes weren’t paid. And Ryan’s grand jury testimony already is on the record, so prosecutors will try to provide witnesses and documents to contradict it. 
 
Ryan’s defense 
 
So far, Ryan’s defense has consisted of Webb’s assertion that prosecutors won’t be able to prove the former governor took any money. That’s the way one law professor who’s followed the case reads it. 
 
“It doesn’t seem that anybody is going to come in and say, ‘I gave George Ryan a bribe,’ ” said Richard Kling, a clinical professor of law at Chicago-Kent College of Law and a practicing defense attorney. 
 
Webb further buttresses his argument by claiming that if Ryan were on the take, he’d be a wealthy man instead of living in his same Kankakee home on his state pension. Prosecutors, however, haven’t alleged Ryan pocketed all the money himself. Instead, they accuse Ryan of having Warner provide financial help and investment cash to family members. Ryan, prosecutors say, did get some of his vacation tabs in Jamaica picked up, and had Warner pay to fix his roof but at least partially reimbursed him. 
 
The defense may try to portray those as simple reporting oversights, that none of the gifts were expensive or lavish enough to be considered payoffs, but were just friends being friendly. 
 
“If people go fix his house as a way of saying, ‘We love you, George,’ that’s not illegal,” DePaul’s Cavise said. 
 
The other prong in Ryan’s defense was to bring up his decision to clear out death row in Illinois shortly before he left office in January 2003, commuting death sentences to life in prison. Getting jury members who supported Ryan’s historic decision could go a long way toward countering the years of negative pretrial publicity, the theory went. But U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer effectively squelched that option by ruling Ryan’s attorneys won’t be able to bring up Ryan’s death penalty work in any substantial fashion. 
 
The legal briefs and pretrial arguments soon will be over, and all of the pregame speculation will be just that. 
 
“It’s almost impossible to appraise how the government’s case will go without knowing what’s in their files,” said Ronald Allen of Northwestern University’s School of Law.