The jury presented another question to Judge James Zagel in the Rod Blagojevich corruption trial. This newest note comes in contrast to the last jury note, which left most people with the impression that this jury was going to hang on a majority of charges. Trial watchers like Jeffery Cramer, from Kroll investigations, say this shows the jurors are not hopelessly deadlocked yet. “Clearly, this jury is still working through a lot of the acts,” he said.
The question from the jury was a request to review testimony of a former Illinois Deputy Governor Bradley Tusk. On the witness stand, Tusk testified about the specific allegation that Rod Blagojevich held up state money intended for a school in the district of then Congressman Rahm Emanuel.
The alleged motivation was to pressure Emanuel into convincing his brother Ari, a high profile Hollywood agent, to host a fundraiser for Blagojevich.
Judge Zagel allowed the jurors to review only the part of the testimony that was spoken while jurors were in the courtroom.
Prior to that, we heard from the jury on Thursday when members indicated that they had only reached agreement on two of the 24 charges, threatening to put away the former Illinois Governor and his brother, Robert.
The jury was deadlocked on 11 counts and had not even started work on the 11 other charges of wire fraud.
“It’s not unusual for a jury to take this long,” Jury Analyst Theresa Zagnoli told Fox News. “You have to remember the number of counts they have and within each count there are different elements.”
Judge Zagel encouraged the jury to continue working and urged them to at least make an attempt at reaching an agreement on the wire fraud charges. With more than 5 weeks of testimony and vulgar phones taps and 22 unresolved charges, that attempt could keep that jury working for much longer than expected.
“If you look at the make up of this jury, they have very process-oriented occupations,” Said Zagnoli, “So they are likely wanting to go through, very carefully.”
In the meantime, legal bills for Rod Blagojevich continue to pile up. He had been paying his legal fees out of his campaign fund, but that dried up. Since the former Governor and Patti are now broke, taxpayers may be obligated to fund the remainder of the Blagojevich defense.






