Gov. Thompson Quoted Regarding Gov. George Ryan Appeal

Governor James Thompson was quoted in the September 1 Associated Press story titled, “Ex-Illinois Governor Wants Part of Conviction Tossed.” The court filings of Gov. Thompson and Winston & Strawn chairman Dan Webb were also quoted and paraphrased in a syndicated Bloomberg News report of the same date titled, “Ex-Governor Ryan Seeks to Upend Conviction.”

According to the news reports, Mr. Ryan becomes the latest incarcerated corporate or government executive to challenge their convictions based on the so-called “honest services” fraud theory used by federal prosecutors to accompany various corruption indictments against them. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court limited the scope of that controversial legal doctrine when attorneys for the former CEO of energy giant, Jeffrey Skilling, convinced a majority of Justices that there needs to be some concrete evidence of bribery or extortion to underpin such criminal charges.

A legal team led by Msrs. Webb and Thompson spent weeks studying the high court’s ruling before deciding to ask federal Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer – who presided over Ryan’s 2006 trial – to toss the convictions based on the honest services counts. 

The Supreme Court’s “Skilling [opinion] applies here,” Thompson told the AP. “There is no question about it.”  That being the case, he and Webb argued in their legal brief, Ryan should be freed after having already served a majority of his 6 and ½ year sentence, which is enough time to cover his required imprisonment for the remaining counts.