Abducted Kankakee heir died in box; killer’s helper now cites abuse
In the three decades since she was found guilty of aiding in the murder of a prominent Kankakee businessman who suffocated after being buried alive, Nancy Rish has largely run out of avenues for overturning her conviction.
Now her attorneys are arguing that she deserves a new sentence
Lawyers for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul are opposed, however. They say the evidence of abuse that Rish has cited is not new and contend it would not likely have changed the sentence because of the grisly nature of Small’s death.
Attorneys are expected to argue the issue in Kankakee County court on Monday, extending the
Rish, now 57, has long maintained that she did not know what Edwards was doing when she drove him around as he committed the crime. Her sister, Lori Guimond, said she would pose no danger to anyone if she walked free. Neither her trial nor her life sentence were fair, the sister argued.
“People with worse offenses have been given much less,” Guimond said.
Small’s family declined to comment, but his sons wrote letters opposing
A spokeswoman for the attorney general’s office, which has handled the case because of a conflict of interest in the local prosecutor’s office, declined to comment.
Rish’s conviction stems from a scheme hatched by Edwards, a small-time drug dealer in the river city about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. He kidnapped Small, the 40-year-old heir to a local media fortune and great-grandson of an Illinois governor, took him to a rural area and buried him in a 6-by-3-foot wooden box outfitted with an air pipe.
Small suffocated as Edwards made calls from pay phones to demand money. Using call-tracing devices and surveillance, policed tracked down and arrested Edwards and Rish a few days after the kidnapping.
Edwards was convicted and sentenced to death, though it was commuted to a life term as Illinois moved toward ending the death penalty. While Rish was not directly involved in the kidnapping or burial, she was convicted of helping Edwards.
In 2017, state appeals judges
Rish’s latest effort to get out of prison is centered on a state law that was amended in 2015. Under the change, those seeking new sentences on the basis of past abuse have to show, among other things, that no evidence of domestic violence had been presented at the original sentencing. They also must show that the evidence would have likely changed the punishment handed down.
Rish’s lawyers argue in their motion that her “unwitting participation” stemmed from Edwards’ “physical abuse, harassment, interference with personal liberty, intimidation” and other acts. Edwards threatened Rish with a gun and said he would kill her and her 8-year-old son if she did not help him with a task whose ultimate purpose he did not explain, her lawyers contend. In the months before the crime, he grabbed her arms, shoved her onto chairs and yelled at her, Rish’s lawyers argue. During an argument, he pulled a phone out of the wall to stop her from calling police, her attorneys wrote.
The motion argues that this evidence was not considered at sentencing.
“It was a heinous crime, obviously. A completely innocent man suffocated because of what Danny did, because of Danny’s greed,” said Margaret Byrne, one of Rish’s attorneys. Still, Byrne added, a life sentence for Rish “is not reasonable.”
The motion was filed in late 2017, but the battle over its merits has been delayed by a fight over whether Rish was beyond a time limit to seek a sentence reduction, Byrne said.
Lawyers for then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sought to have the bid for resentencing thrown out, arguing that the time limit had passed, Byrne said. The new Raoul administration dropped that effort and is taking a different tack by challenging the substance of Rish’s arguments.
Attorneys for Raoul’s office countered that no new sentencing hearing is needed because the instances of alleged abuse were covered at trial, including in Rish’s own testimony, and that the judge considered the trial evidence when passing his sentence. The lawyers also note that the facts of Small’s death have not changed.
“Here, the crime was so horrific that Edwards received a death sentence that was affirmed on appeal; petitioner deserved a similarly severe sentence for her role in the very same crime,” according to an attorney general’s filing.
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