Former Illinois Governor George Ryan Released From Prison Following Historic Death Penalty Moratorium
On this day in Chicago history, January 30, 2013, former Illinois Governor George Ryan was released from a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, marking the end of his incarceration for corruption. Ryan served more than five years of a six-and-a-half-year sentence, a term that concluded exactly 13 years after he first declared a statewide moratorium on executions, a decision that would eventually reshape the American conversation on capital punishment.
Ryan, a Republican who served as governor from 1999 to 2003, initially garnered international acclaim for his stance on the death penalty. In January 2000, he halted all executions in Illinois, declaring the state’s capital punishment system “broken.” He cited the exoneration of 13 death row inmates since 1977—a figure that surpassed the 12 inmates actually executed during that same period—as proof of a “shameful” risk of executing the innocent. Just days before his term ended in 2003, Ryan emptied the state’s death row, commuting the sentences of 167 inmates to life in prison and pardoning four others.
Despite the praise he received from human rights organizations and a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, Ryan’s political career was dismantled by a sprawling federal investigation known as “Operation Safe Road.” In 2006, a jury convicted him on charges including racketeering, conspiracy, tax fraud, and making false statements to the FBI. The investigation uncovered a culture of graft where state employees accepted bribes in exchange for commercial driver’s licenses, with money often funneled into Ryan’s campaign fund.
Critics and victims’ advocates have frequently offered strong objections to Ryan’s humanitarian image, arguing that his death penalty actions were a calculated effort to distract the public from his criminal trials. The most poignant opposition came from the family of the Rev. Duane and Janet Willis. In 1994, the Willis family lost six children in a catastrophic van fire caused by a piece of debris that fell from a truck. The driver of that truck had obtained his license illegally through the bribery scheme overseen during Ryan’s tenure as Secretary of State. For these families, Ryan’s failure to address corruption had fatal consequences that overshadowed his policy achievements.
Upon his release in 2013 at the age of 78, Ryan was transferred to home confinement in Kankakee, Illinois, to serve the remainder of his term. His departure from prison solidified a complex and dual legacy: he remains recorded in history as both the politician who exposed the flaws of the death penalty and a public official convicted of betraying the public trust.
