From the Daily Herald:

Fawell backs Ryan to the end
By Shamus Toomey Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted July 01, 2003

Tears welled up in Scott Fawell's eyes, his face turned bright red and his voice cracked Monday as he stood before a judge and apologized for leaving a "black mark" on the Fawell clan of DuPage County.

But minutes after U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer sentenced former Gov. George Ryan's right-hand man to 6½ years in prison for corruption, the Fawell of old re-emerged. And he lashed out.

Fawell, 46, formerly of St. Charles, called the prosecutors who won racketeering, perjury, tax evasion and obstruction of justice convictions against him in March "ruthless" agents who strong-armed his closest friends into testifying against him.

"Is there any doubt in anybody's mind if I would have sat there and said I'm going to go in and tell stories about George Ryan, would I have gone through this? No," Fawell told reporters Monday as he left the courthouse with his mother, former state Sen. Beverly Fawell of Glen Ellyn; brother, Jeff; and other family at his side.

"I think there's absolutely no doubt. But I have to live with myself somewhere along the line, too. I don't have any magic George Ryan (stories)," he said. "I'm not sitting on a bomb of George Ryan's. I'm not going to go in there and make up stories about him to save myself, which unfortunately, that's the game they like you to play. That's the game people played with me. They told stories that were untrue."

Prosecutors scoffed at Fawell's reaction to his sentence, the longest yet in Operation Safe Road. He is to begin serving it Nov. 9, possibly in the Yankton, South Dakota federal prison. But prosecutors refused to say whether Ryan, who left office in January, will face charges in the scandal that started as a probe into the sale of driver's licenses for bribes under Ryan's watch as secretary of state in the 1990s.

Ryan denies wrongdoing. When asked, Fawell said flat out that his political mentor, who was a father figure to him, did nothing wrong. "No," Fawell said. "Absolutely not."

Fawell did admit to his own wrongdoing, but said it was less than prosecutors claim.

"I made mistakes," he said. "I'm not going to sit here and tell you I didn't make mistakes. … I was in a pretty rough and tumble business, Illinois politics. Always has been, always will be. … Do I consider myself a criminal? Absolutely not. I made some bad decisions and I have to live with those consequences now," he said. "But I think the prosecution, those guys went way overboard."

Assistant U.S. attorneys Patrick Collins, Zach Fardon and Joel Levin argued Fawell sold out his office as Ryan's chief of staff by diverting state workers onto campaigns, giving contracts and prestigious license plates to campaign donors, looting supplies, shredding evidence and pressuring workers to raise campaign cash.

Prosecutors said Ryan's secretary of state office was "one of the most corrupt constitutional offices in Illinois history."

They said Fawell fostered a culture that led to low-level workers selling licenses to inexperienced drivers, several of whom caused deadly crashes.

"Our message in this case, through the evidence, is that corruption in not a cost-free endeavor," Collins said. "Corruption has tangible consequences, in this case, more tragic than any other public corruption case that I've been associated with."

Fawell's lawyers argued he should get a five-year sentence because he wasn't properly warned of the changing political climate. Prosecutors argued he should get 10 years.

The judge gave Fawell a sentence in the middle of the two.

"There may be a culture of corruption in Illinois," Pallmeyer said. "This may be business as usual. Call me naive, but it was news to me. … But certainly I can't accept the notion that Mr. Fawell had no idea what he was doing was wrong."