Feds, Ryan clash over secret hospital visit

Prosecutors and attorneys for George Ryan clashed in court filings Friday over the disgraced former governor's visit to his wife's hospital bedside earlier in the week — a visit kept secret until the government revealed it in a document.

Ryan visited his wife, Lura Lynn, in a Kankakee hospital Wednesday night, according to papers filed Friday by the U.S. Attorney arguing against his release on bond.

The government's response to Ryan's emergency motion requesting bail cited that escorted visit, granted by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, as a partial reason he should not receive bond while pressing a new case against the government on the recently revised “honest services” statute.

Borrowing language from statements made by James Thompson, Ryan's pro bono lawyer and fellow former governor, attorneys immediately responded with a formal reply stating, “The prosecutorial arm of the government has — in violation of the bureau's policy — made the visit public, and attempts to use it as a weapon to deny Ryan's request for bail. This is shabby behavior.”

Prosecutors lashed back with a filing stating there was “nothing inappropriate” in the disclosure, in that it had been cleared with the bureau and that it “accurately and appropriately stated all of the relevant facts, and those facts were pertinent to the issues raised in Ryan's motion.”

The government's original filing early in the day revealed Ryan was granted the visit on Wednesday from the medium-security Terre Haute Federal Correctional Institution, where he is serving a 6½-year sentence following his conviction on corruption charges. That's the day his wife was admitted to Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee suffering complications from cancer treatment. He was with Lura Lynn for two hours that evening starting at 7:30 and was back in Terre Haute the following morning.

Bureau of Prisons policy is to not release word of any visit or furlough granted an inmate, over privacy concerns, and Ryan's attorneys likewise did not comment on it, after staging a full-scale media blitz earlier Wednesday in an attempt to press for his release. Thompson said at the time he had no knowledge of the visit, later claiming in radio interviews he was following a “no press” edict for the visit and adding it was “pretty shabby” for prosecutors to reveal it.

Yet Traci Billingsley, spokeswoman for the Board of Prisons, denied the agency ever issued such an order. “Our practice for ourselves is not to release information,” she said, again citing privacy concerns. “That's not held to anyone else. ... We would have no authority to do so.”

Thompson and the communications manager at his Winston & Strawn law firm did not return calls for comment Friday.

Ryan's emergency motion for bond, filed this week with the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, cited his ailing wife as a cause, saying, “Absent bail, Ryan is very unlikely to see his wife again” as “she has, at most, weeks to live.”

The government's response said, in effect, the escorted visit granted by the Bureau of Prisons undercut that argument. “Through normal prison procedures,” it stated, “Ryan has been able to visit with his wife.”

Thus, it argued, Ryan's claim that his wife's health constituted an “exceptional circumstance” was invalid.

“Although the serious medical problems suffered by his wife are truly unfortunate, they do not warrant special treatment with respect to bail pending appeal in the context of post-conviction proceedings,” it stated. “The district court correctly determined that Ryan should not receive treatment that other inmates would not receive based on his wife's medical condition.”

Otherwise, the filing echoed many of the arguments that U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer endorsed last month in refusing Ryan's original request for bond pending his new suit against the government.

“Ryan has not shown that his appeal is likely to succeed,” the government stated.

The appellate court will rule on the motion in the coming days.

A statewide poll conducted this week by the Serafin & Associates public-relations firm said 69 percent of people interviewed felt the disgraced former governor should be allowed a temporary leave to visit his wife. Yet that was before word broke that the visit had already taken place. Comments on the Daily Herald website ran overwhelmingly against Ryan on Friday.