Government: No bail in Ryan case.

From SCOTUSblog:

The Justice Department on Monday urged the Supreme Court to clear the way for the jailing on Wednesday of former Illinois Gov. George H. Ryan, Sr., and an associate, arguing that they have no chance of gaining Supreme Court review of their claims of serious juror misconduct during their trial in federal court. Pleas to remain out of prison until the Supreme Court can act on their coming petition, the Department filing said, “are granted only in extraordinary circumstances,” and the plea at issue here falls “well short” of meeting that standard. (Application 07A373, Warner and Ryan v. U.S.)

While Ryan and his longtime friend Lawrence E. Warner have complained of juror errors, “they forfeited or waived most of the juror issues” they made in their application, the brief in opposition said. Moreover, if any claims of juror misconduct were alleged properly, it is clear, the government contended, that the trial judge “took every possible step to ensure that the jury was and remained impartial,” and the jury was in fact impartial.

“Those fact-bound rulings — made in the context of this highly unusual fact pattern that is not likely to recur — are correct and would not warrant this Court’s review even if applicants had
properly preserved their challenges,” the filing said.

The judge was clearly within her power, the government contended, to dismiss two of the jurors for misconduct after eight days of deliberation, and to replace them with alternates. The judge instructed the jury, it noted, to start all over again, without relying upon what they had done in deliberations up to that point. Besides, it contended, the defense did not object to removal of the jurors as such.

The government document can be found here. Attached to it was the response federal prosecutors had filed in the Seventh Circuit Court in opposing en banc review at that level. That added document is here.

Later in the day, defense lawyers for the two men filed a reply brief, arguing that lower courts relied on the guilty verdict and the lengthy record of the trial as all that mattered. “But there is a fundamental, foundational defect: the veery thing that permits confidence in jury verdicts is absent here — a fair and impartial jury. And it is absent because the district court adopted a process — now affirmed in a published opinion of the Court of Appeals — that reconfigured the jury after eight days of deliberations, pervasive jury misconduct, interrogation of the entire jury panel and removal of a defense holdout.” Moreover, the reply contended, the entire trial was built on “a legal fiction — the state of Illinois as the RICO enterprise” behind the charge of a RICO conspiracy. The reply brief can be found here.

On side note:

Former Gov. George Ryan is guaranteed to strike out in his effort to overturn his corruption conviction and should go to prison without delay, federal officials told the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday.

Just two days before Ryan was due to report to prison, government officials delivered a 32-page brief to the nation’s highest court, urging it to deny any further bail to Ryan and his co-defendant, Larry Warner.

Ryan and Warner are due to report to prison by 5 p.m. Wednesday unless they can get the Supreme Court to grant bail pending further appeal.

If they do get bail, they will remain free while they try to persuade the Supreme Court to consider their claim they didn’t get a fair trial.

http://www.dailysouthtown.com/news/636038,BC-IL--LicensesforSale.article