On 23 August 2008, Philip Opas QC, died after a long illness at the age of 91. Opas maintained Ryan's innocence to the end. Opas asked Australian Coalition President Dorina Lisson to keep fighting to clear Ryan's name. According to Ms Lisson, she and others are determined to have Ryan's murder conviction overturned because there is no scientific ballistic forensic evidence to prove Ryan guilty of murder, that a wrongly convicted man was hanged based solely on unsigned unrecorded unproven "hearsay" allegations of verbals/confessions.