CHICAGO (AP) -- Former Gov. George Ryan's lawyers made a fresh effort Friday to have his racketeering conviction thrown out, declaring that the six-month trial was awash in legal errors and juror misconduct.
``These jurors distinguished themselves by their willingness to engage in blatant misconduct and by their failure to follow the simplest and clearest instructions from the court,'' the lawyers said in court papers.
Ryan, 73, and businessman Larry Warner, 67, were convicted in April of racketeering, mail fraud and other offenses. They are due to be sentenced Sept. 6. The trial was marked by stormy bickering over jury deliberations.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca R. Pallmeyer bounced two jurors who failed to disclose their arrest records, and the bickering intensified after it became known other jurors also had brushes with the law or misstated facts on their court-required questionnaires.
One juror, after hiring a lawyer, tearfully admitted bringing a legal article she found on the Internet into the jury room and using it warn a fellow jury member that she might be expelled.
Still another juror hired a politically connected law firm and sent a lawyer into court to try to stop any further investigation of the jury.
``This case illustrates what a jury's verdict is not supposed to be,'' Ryan's lawyers told Pallmeyer in seeking to have the verdict thrown out.
The defense attorneys urged Pallmeyer not to disregard any violations of the former governor's right to a fair trial merely because the trial was long and costly and nobody wants to go through the whole ordeal again.
``A defendant in a six month trial is entitled to the same measure of due process and fair play as a defendant in a six-day trial,'' they said.
They said that when they previously asked to have the verdict thrown out, federal prosecutors answered with 50 pages of court papers reviewing the evidence against Ryan and Warner.
``When it comes to juror-related issues (76 pages into the brief) it becomes readily apparent that even the most skilled advocate cannot muster an apology sufficient to absolve the irregularities that surround these deliberations,'' they said. ``The jurors misconduct is too pervasive and egregious, and the legal errors too prejudicial.''
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