Rogue Juror Votes Against Guilty Verdict For Rod Blagojevich In 23 Of 24 Counts

by Frances Martel | 1:53 pm, August 18th, 2010

» 8 comments

The mass confusion surrounding the trials and mistrials of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich continue, a day after he was found guilty of one charge of lying to the FBI and the judge called a mistrial on the other 23 racketeering, bribery, and other corruption charges. Now some of the jurors have come out and said that eleven of the twelve of them were ready to convict, but one lone juror refused to vote “guilty” on 23 of the charges.

According to ABC News, juror Erik Sarnello identified a female juror as the one holdout, and told the AP that she “just didn’t see what we all saw” on charges he called “obvious.” NPR spoke to another juror, Steven Wlodek, who confessed that he felt the jury had “let the people of the state down,” as he felt “there was guilt on more than three-quarters of the counts.” He also cited the one juror. A third juror, Ralph Schindler, told the Chicago News Cooperative that the deadlock was “clear from the start,” and that he would have preferred continued deliberations: “There were people, myself included, yesterday who were willing to stay and work longer if the group felt that we were able to achieve consensus… but the majority of the group felt that we had exhausted all possibilities of reaching an agreement.”

The jury foreman, however, James Matsumoto said there was on single holdout on every charge and described the behavior among the jurors as “respectful.” He was also quick to point out to ABC News that he voted “guilty” on every single charge. Whether or not there was only one juror between Blagojevich and certain jail time, however, Judge James Zagel has already promised a round two, indicating that it is “absolutely” his intention to retry the case to add to what could potentially be up to five years in jail for Blagojevich so far– a charge he has already promised to appeal and vehemently denied yesterday.

Blago, Blago trial, corruption, Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, Senate Seat

http://apostrophejones.com Apostrophe jones

Thank you , Juror # 9 , Tammy Jean Blagojevich .
http://apostrophejones.com Apostrophe jones

Hey , it’s Chicago , Jake .
ordinary

Fitzgerald is the one who should go to jail for obstruction of justice. He prematurely blew the whistle on the investigation because it was clearly beginning to involve the recently elected Obama Administration. He let his political views influence his job.
JimBob

Fitzgerald needed it to get it shoved up his smug pompous ass
after going after Libby, KNOWING Libby did not out that stupid
CIA Clerk.
Go Blago!! Switch to GOP and keep shoving it to them!!!
ordinary

Fitzgerald was horrified that high ups in the Obama administration and perhaps even Obama himself would soon be implicated in the senate seat for sale scandal, so he blew the investigation wide open.
felixw

This definitely paves the way for CNN to hire Blago to co-host with Eliot Spitzer.
Nietzky

The proverbial problem with Juries is that it takes only ONE dissident to invalidate the whole process and
the System starts again. I believe that ONE carefully selected Judge -who has not been seen as prejudicial-
is better than 12 Jurors who have been scrutinized and confused by Attorneys
http://none pyrope

Nietzky said:
The proverbial problem with Juries is that it takes only ONE dissident to invalidate the whole process andthe System starts again. I believe that ONE carefully selected Judge -who has not been seen as prejudicial-is better than 12 Jurors who have been scrutinized and confused by Attorneys

You captured my remarks better than I could ever have stated them.