FILE - Gov. George Ryan speaks to the media following his address to an education summit held at the Executive Mansion in Springfield, Ill., on Jan. 28, 2002. Associated Press file photo

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, disgraced by a corruption scandal that landed him in prison yet heralded by some for clearing the state’s death row, has died. He was 91.

Kankakee County Coroner Robert Gessner, a family friend, said Ryan died Friday afternoon at his home in Kankakee, where he was receiving hospice care.

Ryan started out a small-town pharmacist but wound up running one of the country’s largest states. Along the way, the tough-on-crime Republican experienced a conversion on the death penalty and won international praise by halting executions as governor and, eventually, emptying death row.

He served only one term as governor, from 1999 to 2003, that ended amid accusations he used government offices to reward friends, win elections and hide corruption that played a role in the fiery deaths of six children. Eventually, Ryan was convicted of corruption charges and sentenced to 6½ years in federal prison.

During his more than five years behind bars, Ryan worked as a carpenter and befriended fellow inmates, many of whom addressed him as “governor.” He was released in January 2013, weeks before his 79th birthday, looking thinner and more subdued.

He’d been defiant heading to prison. The night before he went in, Ryan insisted he was innocent and would prove it. But when Ryan asked President George W. Bush to grant him clemency in 2008, he said he accepted the verdict against him and felt “deep shame.”

“I apologize to the people of Illinois for my conduct,” Ryan said at the time.

Ryan was still serving his sentence when his wife, Lura Lynn, died in June 2011. He was briefly released to be at her deathbed but wasn’t allowed to attend her funeral. On the day he left prison and returned to the Kankakee home where he and his wife had raised their children, one of his grandchildren handed him an urn containing his wife’s ashes.

Born in Iowa and raised in Kankakee, Ryan married his high school sweetheart, followed his father in becoming a pharmacist and had six children. Those who knew Ryan described him as the ultimate family man and a neighbor’s neighbor, someone who let local kids use his basketball court or rushed to Dairy Queen to buy treats when they missed the ice cream truck.

His willingness to set aside party orthodoxy sometimes put him at odds with more conservative Republicans. He led a failed effort in 1989 to get the General Assembly to restrict assault weapons. He backed gambling expansion. He became the first governor to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro took power. And in 2000, after signing off on the execution of one killer, he decided not to carry out any more. He imposed a moratorium on executions and began reviewing reforms to a judicial system that repeatedly sentenced innocent men to die.

Ultimately, Ryan decided no reforms would provide the certainty he wanted. In virtually his last act as governor, he emptied death row with pardons and commutations in 2003.

“Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral —

I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death,” Ryan said.

Ryan found himself mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Peace Prize at the same time federal prosecutors were closing in. He would be charged with taking payoffs, gifts and vacations in return for steering government contracts and leases to cronies, as well as lying to investigators and cheating on his taxes.