August 2010

1 Vote Away on At Least Two Counts

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

From the Tribune it appears one juror was the hold up on selling the Senate Seat and the effort to extort money out Rahm Emmanuel through his brother Ari.

More to the point is one juror’s desription of the case by the Prosecution:

Sarnello, a sophomore at College of DuPage studying criminal justice, said the main problem with the prosecution’s case was that it appeared scattered.

“It confused people. They didn’t follow a timeline. They jumped around,” he said.

This is a key point to the racketeering and conspiracy charges. There has to be an ongoing criminal enterprise and one thing you have to do to have an audience understand such an argument is provide a clear timeline to them, where the distinct events occur along the timeline, and how it worked. One concern I’ve had since early on is that all, but they lying charge are all relatively contemporaneous despite the investigation starting in 2003/4.. By concentrating on the later acts that have better evidence with the wiretaps the Prosecution was concentrating upon the strongest evidence, but they hurt their timeline. What is probably needed is some testimony from the earlier efforts to demonstrate the ongoing enterprise. That may require Levine or Rezko on the stand to establish the early part of the conspiracy. If they primarily concentrate upon those issues in questioning, their lack of reliability is diminished in the later specific crimes.

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First Juror Reactions

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

From the Chicago News Coop:

Matsumoto said he was in favor of convicting the former governor on all counts, and was not the only juror who felt that way. “I believe they proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt. I’m very regretful,” Matusmoto said.

Still, other jurors remained unmoved by the tapes and other evidence and testimony during the trial. Some jurors said, “Oh, they were just talking,” Matsumoto said.

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Early Tuesday morning, the jury had agreed to two guilty counts. A charge related to an allegation of attempted extortion of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel fell by the wayside as jurors lost confidence in the government’s evidence on that charge, said another juror, Erik Sarnello, 21, a student who lives with his parents in suburban Itasca.

The government had alleged that Blagojevich held up a state grant to the Chicago Academy until Rahm Emanuel’s Hollywood-agent brother, Ari, would throw him a fundraiser.

From the start of deliberations, some jurors admitted they believed from the start of deliberations that Blagojevich was guilty. “Some people said they thought he was guilty, but the evidence is really not there,” he said.

Sarnello said he knew by day three of the 13-day deliberations that the jury was in for a long haul. That prompted him to give a speech in which he sought to persuade fellow jurors to agree with each other rather than than extending deliberations. At that point, Sarnello believed Blagojevich guilty on several counts.

“It was petty obvious to me that some of these people needed clear cut evidence. They wanted to see the videos,” Sarnello said.

While jurors always have their own judgment to rely upon I would say some holdouts were likely not following the judge’s directions and were looking for a different standard of what a crime is. That happens and the government is going to have to do a better job of creating a narrative from the sounds of it, but I think there are several counts that could be convictions with a different jury. Conspiracy, for example, is generally “just talking. “

Key point:

Sarnello addressed the question of why the jury Tuesday asked for a copy of the oath they took at the start of deliberations. Some jurors felt one of the jurors was not deliberating in good faith. “Some people felt that they were deliberating not under what the law told us to do,” he said.

“What they were looking at wasn’t what we were supposed to be looking at based on what the judge gave us as a set of rules,” Sarnello said.

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As Things Settle In Remember that Hal Turner Took Three Trials

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

Hal Turner is a human piece of excrement and white nationalist, wait–I repeat myself–who threatened three federal judges including Richard Posner after a ruling on the Chicago gun ban. It took three trials to convict him largely because he used a defense that it was all political trash talk. In comments I was reminded of the case:

Two things in life you never know, Whoa a widow will marry and what a jury will do.

My suspicion is that there was a bad juror. It happens. Fitzgerald needed 3 trials to convict Hal Turner. Blago’s time will come. Rushing to the lobby of the Dirksen Building to spit in Fitzgerald’s face was not a wise decision.

Here’s a bit on the Turner conviction in the end.

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Please use this Thread to Make Fun of My Prediction

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

Last week.

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George Ryan vs. Rod Blagojevich

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

George Ryan got what he deserved, but he deserved a lot less than Rod Blagojevich. We’ll have to hear what the jury has to say, but there needs to be a far better effort for the retrial.

Prosecutors want to retry on all counts.

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Retrial

ArchPundit August 17, 2010 No Comments

Knowing something about false statement charges he’ll go away for over a year on that one given the context. However, it is hard to imagine the Federal Government doesn’t retry this case.

Unbelievable.

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