George Ryan, the Governor of Illinois who stopped the prison executions, dies on 91

In 2004 the investigation reached Mr. Ryan: he was accused of accepting $ 167,000 in cash, holidays and gifts for himself, his family and friends. Completed for accusations of fraud and racketeering, he was convicted of 18 counts after a five -month trial in 2006 and sentenced to six and a half year in prison, a period that was mainly spent in a federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, IND. He was temporarily released in 2011 to visit his wife, in 2011 to visit his wife, Lura Lynn RyanIn a Kankakee hospital on the day she died of lung cancer.

Scott Turrow, a lawyer, author and member of the committee that Mr. Ryan had mentioned to revise the capital cases of the State, asked a rhetorical question to reporters about the man who had set the boundaries of power and shame: “Who was George Ryan?” Mr. Turow asked after conviction. “It is a question that is best asked about Shakespeare.”

George Homer Ryan, the youngest of three children of Thomas and Jeanette (Bowman) Ryan, was born on February 24, 1934 in Maquoketa, Iowa, where the family of his mother raised cattle. Months after his birth, his father obtained a pharmacy training at the University of Iowa and took a job at Walgreens, the drugstore chain.

After a brief placement on a Walgreens on the south side of Chicago, Thomas Ryan was transferred to a store in Kankakee, a small city per hour driving south of Chicago, where the family settled and where George; his sister, Kathleen; And his brother, Tom, grew up and went to public schools. In 1947 the Ryans adopted 15-year-old Nancy Schrey after the death of her widow father, Harry Schrey, a friend of the family.

In 1948 Thomas Ryan opened his own pharmacy in Kankakee. George, a first -year student at the Kankakee High School, worked there on lunch hours and during the weekend, with soft drinks, washing dishes and scrubbing. He also found time to play football in high school and baseball.