Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan was transferred yesterday to a federal prison in Terre Haute, In., from a prison camp in Oxford, Wi., says the Chicago Sun-Times. He had been assigned to a daily clean up of a workout room in the Wisconsin facility, said his wife, Lura Lynn Ryan. The former governor, who is serving a 6½-year sentence, had to move because Oxford will provide medical treatment only to inmates 70 years old or younger, and Ryan is 74.
Ryan is appealing to the Supreme Court his conviction on steering state contracts to friends and taking perks in return. The federal prison system’s only death chamber is in Terre Haute. Ryan spent much of his last years as governor opposing the death penalty, emptied Illinois Death Row in 2003 and imposed a moratorium on executions in Illinois. The chief witness at Ryan’s trial, his former chief of staff, Scott Fawell, complained of conditions at Terre Haute.
Link: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/819280,CST-NWS-ryan29.article