{"id":2152,"date":"2010-08-18T12:45:30","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T12:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2152"},"modified":"2010-08-18T12:45:30","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T12:45:30","slug":"more_questions_than_answers_in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=2152","title":{"rendered":"More Questions Than Answers In Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s Washington Times<\/a> posted a report on the verdict in the Rod Blagojevich trial in Chicago.  Rod Blagojevich was convicted on one count–lying to the FBI, only one of the twenty-four charges against him.  The maximum penalty for lying to a federal agent is five years in prison.  One juror reported that a single, female juror held voted against all the other charges, but agreed to that charge.  <\/p>\n

According to the article:<\/p>\n

\n

“<\/em>Mr. Sarnello<\/em><\/a> (one of the jurors), of Itasca, Ill., later told the <\/em>Associated Press<\/em><\/a> that one woman on the panel “just didn’t see what we all saw.” Other members of the 12-person jury tried to persuade the holdout to reconsider, but “at a certain point, there was no changing,” he said.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Justice Department has agreed to retry to case after a judge declared a mistrial on twenty-three of the charges because of the deadlocked jury.  <\/p>\n

The interesting turn in this trial occurred when Rod Blagojevich reversed his prior decision to testify.  The reason for this was either that the defense felt that they had already won the case and did not want to take a chance on his testimony losing it after it had been won or, along the same lines, Rod Blagojevich testifying in itself would have represented a considerable risk.  Former-Governor Blagojevich was known for his rather flamboyant style and might easily have gotten carried away on the witness stand and said things that would have undermined his defense.  <\/p>\n

There is, of course, a reasonable amount of speculation about why the one juror was the lone holdout on twenty-three of the twenty-four counts.  If the Democrats fixed the jury to avoid the convinction of a Democrat governor during an election cycle, they made a mistake.  This verdict, combined with the fact that the Justice Department plans to retry the case, will keep the concept of Chicago political corruption in front of the voters through the election season.  If there was jury-tampering involved, it probably was not the best way to handle this trial.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday’s Washington Times posted a report on the verdict in the Rod Blagojevich trial in Chicago.  Rod Blagojevich was convicted on one count–lying to the FBI, only one of the twenty-four charges against him.  The maximum penalty for lying to a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}