By MIKE ROBINSON,

Associated Press Writer

CHICAGO - A federal appeals court refused Thursday to grant former Gov. George Ryan and a co-defendant a fresh hearing on their racketeering and fraud convictions. 

 
Even the three judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who dissented in the 6-3 decision wrote that they “agree with the panel majority that the evidence of the defendant’s guilt was overwhelming.”

 

Ryan, 73, already had lost his bid to have his April 2006 conviction reversed by a three-judge panel of the appeals court. He and co-defendant Larry Warner, a Chicago businessman and longtime friend of Ryan’s, had sought to have the case considered again by all the sitting appeals judges.

 

Ryan, a Republican who gained national prominence for his opposition to the death penalty, was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in federal prison after his conviction. But the sentence had been put on hold and he remained free while the request for another hearing was pending.

 

It was not clear when Ryan would be required to report to prison. He did not return a message left on his cell phone. The office of his attorney, James R. Thompson, said it had no immediate comment. Thompson, himself a former governor, had said he would take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

 

A message seeking comment from Warner was not immediately returned.

 

Former federal prosecutor Patrick M. Collins, who spearheaded the eight-year investigation of corruption in the Ryan era, said the Supreme Court would be Ryan’s last hope.

 

“This is the end of the road,” Collins said.

 

Ryan was convicted of taking payoffs from political insiders in exchange for state business while he was secretary of state from 1991 to 1999 and governor from 1999 to 2003. He had been accused of steering state contracts to Warner and other political friends for gifts ranging from a golf bag to vacations in Jamaica.

 

In 2000, Ryan declared a moratorium on executions after 13 Illinois death row inmates were found to have been wrongly convicted. Then, days before he left office, he emptied out the state’s death row, commuting the sentences of all 167 inmates to life in prison.

 

But the federal investigation of the secretary of state’s office under Ryan eventually ensnared him. It had been speeded up after six children died in 1994 in a fiery accident involving a truck driver who got his license illegally.

 

Authorities eventually found that unqualified truck drivers had obtained licenses through bribes. Federal prosecutors began convicting his employees and friends, moving closer and closer to Ryan.

 

Ryan’s request for a new trial cited problems that had surfaced during the jury’s lengthy deliberations, including the dismissal of a juror who had allegedly snored and another who failed to disclose her arrest record. His lawyers argued that the questioning of jury panel members about the problems had intimidated them and affected their impartiality.

 

The dissenting circuit judges found that those issues were grounds for a full hearing, but prosecutors scoffed at the notion, and the court’s majority concurred.

 

 

Associated Press Writer Tara Burghart contributed to this report.