LaHood hand delivers Ryan plea to Bush aide

KANKAKEE - Former Gov. George Ryan's wife says she has written a letter asking President George Bush to let her husband come home from prison.

"I asked (the president) to please let him come home because I needed him because of my health," Lura Lynn Ryan told the Chicago Tribune for story published in Sunday editions.

Ryan, 74, said she has suffered dizzy spells since an aneurysm four years ago and wears a medical alert necklace in case of an emergency.

The letter marks the latest request asking Bush to commute the former Republican governor's 61/2-year racketeering and fraud sentence to the about 13 months he's already served. George Ryan was convicted of steering contracts to cronies, using state employees to run his campaigns and burying an investigation of bribes paid in exchange for drivers license when he was secretary of state.

A petition for clemency was filed on Ryan's behalf weeks ago. Presidents customarily commute some sentences and issue some pardons as they leave office.

Lura Lynn Ryan said her husband, also 74, is not necessarily optimistic about his chances.

Still, "nothing would make him happier than to be able to come home and be with me," said Ryan, who speaks by phone almost every day to her husband in federal prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

Lura Lynn Ryan said her letter was hand-delivered to a presidential aide by Republican U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood, who was selected this week to be President-elect Barack Obama's transportation secretary.

"It was a courtesy to Mrs. Ryan," said LaHood spokesman Tim Butler, who noted LaHood opposes George Ryan's commutation bid.

Former Gov. Jim Thompson, Ryan's attorney, said more than 200 letters from Ryan's family, friends, neighbors and former colleagues accompanied Ryan's clemency petition. He has declined to speculate on whether the burgeoning scandal over alleged corruption on the part of Ryan's successor, Gov. Rod Blagojevich, would have any impact on the bid for clemency.

"The only thing left to do is wait for the president's action," Thompson said.