There was a time long ago, in December 2008 soon after this blog was founded, that this blog was almost all Blagojevich all the time, and the keeper of The Official Guide to Blagojevich Blogs . (What made it “Official”? You’ll have to read the post to find out.)
The coverage of all things Blago, and the related Roland Burris appointment, continued to over 50 posts.
Those of you old enough to remember those days may have noticed a distinct lack of Blago here.
The world moved on, but not the prosecutors. Blago is being retried on the counts as to which there was a hung jury the first time around, and how’s it going? I can’t say with any certainty because I haven’t followed the retrial closely, but the jurors have just ended their 7th day of deliberation without a verdict.
As reported by the local ABC station:
Jurors deliberating the fate of Rod Blagojevich continue to sift through evidence in the former governor’s corruption retrial.
The jury- made up of 11 women and one man- finished their seventh day of deliberations Tuesday. There is no indication of where they may be in the process. Given the duration of the trial, it is no surprise that they would go this long.
Last Thursday, the jury asked Judge James Zagel a substantial question in connection with the charges of wire fraud. They have not been heard from since. That could mean almost anything- that they reached an agreement there and moved on or they moved on without reaching an agreement. Or, they could still be working it out.
Will Blago walk again? Hard to say. If he did, it would be “f-in golden.”
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Comments
Your post made me check on the BlagoBlog and sure enough there it was still going strong.
Chicago Sun- Times
Fellow lawyer. You can have influence on this. Again tonight I saw Jard Bernstein talk about the Bush drive into the ditch and the “rescue” by Obama. GDP was -6.0% in Q4, 2008, and jobs were going down at 800,000/month. Now GDP is 2% and 2.1 new jobs have been created. This is Obama’s talking point and too many pundits are flabbergasted by it. It does sound successful. But at $800B of stimulus, that comes out to $400,000/job created. In absolute terms the stiumuls “worked.” It just was a huge waste in doing so. This misdirection has to be corrected succinctly and that $400,000/job figure is the way to do it. Please spread the word.
The biggest problem with this ‘Show Trail’ is that none of the major players were called. http://www.citizenwells.wordpress.com
I think it likely that Blago is going to walk. Illinois is a rough state in politics to start with, but Blago was good at playing the game of skirting the ethics line without actually crossing it (unlike mayor Daley and now mayor Emanuel, of Chicago who both did and/or are now doing things that are blatantly illegal under federal law, and yet nobody is stepping up to prosecute).
Long and short of it is I think that Blago’s got enough to create reasonable doubt on almost all of the charges. The fact that the jury’s had to deliberate for 7 days already means that the prosecutor didn’t make a slam-dunk case (which, after having a practice run at it [the first trial], he should have been able to do if he actually had solid evidence).
I don’t know why the jury has to take so long. One look at his hair should be enough to determine guilt beyond a reasonable, etc……