CHICAGO — Nancy Rish, who was originally serving a life sentence for the 1987 kidnapping and murder of Stephen Small, a Kankakee businessman who suffocated after being buried alive, walked free Thursday after she won a sentencing appeal last July, according to one of her attorneys.
“Of course she’s very happy to be released from prison after 12,580 days,” said attorney Margaret Byrne. “But you know she has always asserted her innocence so it is bittersweet.”
Rish, 60, left the Logan Correctional Center at 10:30 a.m. Thursday on parole after being imprisoned since Dec. 27, 1988, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections and Byrne.
“She walked to the car with a correctional officer who assisted her with a brown box containing all of her worldly possessions,” said Byrne, who picked her up.
“It was a great moment.”
After meeting Rish’s sister and other friends, they went to lunch in Bloomington, where Rish ordered soup.
Her release comes after a Kankakee County judge earlier this month reduced her life sentence to 70 years with the possibility of parole.
“Of course, it’s better to be released after nearly 35 years than to die in prison,” Byrne said.
She was arrested when she was 26. The decision came down only hours before her release.
“We realized today that she’d be getting out,” Byrne said. “We hoped but we were not sure.”
In January a law came into effect that took into consideration her educational achievements while in prison, according to Byrne.
Rish earned her GED and an associate’s degree, said Byrne. “The department of corrections awarded her credit,” Byrne said.
For the next month, Rish has to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet but she will be completely finished with her sentence after three years, Byrne said.
“Overall, an innocent woman was convicted,” said Byrne, who added that Rish is “very aware of the ongoing pain and suffering of Stephen Small’s family.”
“The crime was horrific. Small suffered unimaginably buried in a box and suffocating,” Byrne said.
In December 2017, Rish filed a petition that asked for a resentencing hearing to allow the court to consider evidence of domestic violence.
Byrne and her other attorney, Steven Becker, said she was coerced by ex-boyfriend Daniel Edwards into driving him and that she was unaware of his kidnapping plan. In July, the appellate court ruled in Rish’s favor, asking for a new judge who had not ruled over Rish’s case previously if the state tries to appeal the ruling.
Byrne told the Tribune last year that it was “the first time in 33½ years that she’s gotten a ruling that may result in her sentence being reduced from natural life.”
Rish was convicted of helping with the plot hatched by Edwards, a small-time Kankakee drug dealer, to kidnap Small, the 40-year-old heir to a local media fortune. Edwards took him to a rural area and buried him in a 6-by-3-foot wooden box outfitted with an air pipe, but Small suffocated. Edwards made calls from pay phones to demand money, and police used call-tracing devices and surveillance to nab Edwards and Rish days after the kidnapping.
Rish was sentenced to life in prison after a jury trial in 1988.
Edwards was convicted and sentenced to death, though his punishment was commuted to a life term by then-Gov. George Ryan — Small’s neighbor — as Illinois moved toward ending the death penalty.
Rish had maintained her innocence through more than three decades of legal losses.
In the 2017 petition, Rish’s attorneys argued that Edwards had threatened to kill her and her son if she didn’t help him. The petition also detailed that Rish grew up in a domestic abuse household, where her father was an alcoholic and physically and mentally abused Rish’s mother.
The attorneys argued that Rish’s case is like those that Illinois legislators had in mind when they changed the law in 2015 to give abuse victims a break on their prison sentences. Then-state Sen. Kwame Raoul, who is now Illinois attorney general, co-sponsored the measure. Raoul’s office opposes her bid for freedom.
The opinion released last July stated that the state maintained the trial court’s sentence rested on the “horrific nature of the crime in which (defendant) played an integral part” and that the evidence of domestic violence could not overcome the seriousness of the crime.
Byrne snapped an emotional photo of Rish and her sister, who embraced and cried as they waited for a table for lunch. Their mother died about a month ago. Rish ordered soup, as she wasn’t feeling “great” as the day had been overwhelming, Byrne said.
Her plans may include a job she learned while in prison for the past 20 years: training service dogs for people with disabilities. She also learned how to groom the pups, a task she hopes to pursue.
“She wants to open a dog grooming business,” Byrne said.
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