Blagojevich on guilty verdict: 'I frankly am stunned'

Saying he was "stunned,"Rod Blagojevich was uncharacteritically tight-lipped today after a jury convicted him on 17 of 20 counts of corruption against him.

Holding his wife’s hand, Blagojevich spoke in a somber tone to a crush of reporters in the federal courthouse. "Patti and I obviously are very disappointed  in the outcome. I, frankly, am stunned. There's not much left to say other than we want to get home to our little girls and talk to them and explain things to them and try to sort things out. And I'm sure we'll be seeing you.”http://www.prmindustry.com/
Abstract...Articles section The two then walked to a waiting car as some in the crowd booed.

The federal jury found that the former governor brazenly abused the powers of his office in a series of attempted shakedowns captured on undercover government recordings.

Blagojevich showed no reaction as the jury announced its decision. Once the verdicts were read, he sat back in his chair with his lips pursed, looked toward his wife Patti and whispered, "I love you."

As the first guilty verdict was read, Patti Blagojevich slumped into the arms of her brother, who stroked her head. She kept shaking her head "no" as the jurors left the courtroom, and once the judge was gone, the former governor grabbed his wife’s right hand and hugged and kissed her.

When he arrived at his house in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, Blagojevich said he wanted to "let the people know I fought real hard for them."

As Blagojevich was heading home, the forewoman of the jury was telling reporters that jurors were confident they had reached a "fair and just" verdict.

A woman, known as Juror 103, said Blagojevich’s testimony made reaching a verdict a bit more difficult “because he was personable.”

“It made it harder to separate that from what we had heard” in recordings, she said.

Another woman, Juror 140, said she sometimes found Blagojevich’s testimony “manipulative.”

“I would rather have heard just the facts,” she said. “I think (with) our verdict, we did not believe it (the testimony).”

That same juror said the evidence on the sale of theU.S. Senate seat was the clearest of all the charges because of the abundance of recorded evidence. "We felt he was trying to make a trade for the Senate seat,” she said.

The jury took multiple votes at times during the 10 days of deliberations. It convicted Blagojevich on all 11 counts on the sale of the U.S. Senate and all three counts on the shakedowns of Children’s Memorial Hospital and a racetrack executive.

The jury acquitted him on one count and deadlocked on a second count accusing him of shaking down a construction executive. It also deadlocked on the one count alleging Blagojevich shook down then-U.S. Rep.  Rahm  Emanuel.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said the verdict was a "bittersweet moment."

He noted that five years ago, another jury convicted anIllinois governor and sent a message that corruption would not be tolerated. "Governor Blagojevich did not get that message."

If people start to believe that it's politics as usual to trade a Senate seat for campaign donations, "then we're in a world of hurt."

This marks the second time in less than a year that the 54-year-old Blagojevich, the only Illinois chief executive ever impeached and ousted from office, had been convicted of a crime. The jury at his first trial last summer found him guilty of lying to theFBI, though that panel deadlocked on all the other counts. That impasse set the stage for a retrial.Blagojevich, the fourth former governor convicted of felonies since 1973, likely faces a significant prison sentence.

The sweeping verdict after last summer’s muddled end to the first trial represents a redemption of sorts for the office of Fitzgerald, who on the day of Blagojevich’s arrest in 2008 accused the then-governor of spearheading a “political corruption crime spree.”

Responding to complaints from jurors in the first trial that the government presentation was confusing, prosecutors streamlined the case by jettisoning complicated racketeering charges. Charges were also dropped against Blagojevich’s brother, Robert, his chief fundraiser who had been tried beside the former governor last summer.

In repackaging the case, prosecutors dispensed with evidence aimed at showing that Blagojevich had conspired with top fundraisers from the earliest days of his administration to corrupt state boards and pocket ill-gotten proceeds. Also erased was testimony about Blagojevich’s expensive taste in clothing and his tendency to shirk official responsibilities.

Testifying in his own defense, Blagojevich claimed prosecutors had twisted his words recorded on secret government wiretaps and insisted he was guilty of nothing more than thinking out loud. What’s more, Blagojevich’s lawyers emphasized, none of the illegal plots he was accused of hatching ever came to fruition.

Blagojevich’s turn on the witness stand, something he had promised to do in his first trial before backing out, proved a double-edged sword. Under cross-examination he came off as a quibbler as a prosecutor drew a bead on his credibility from the very first question: “You are a convicted liar, correct?”

Even before the verdict, Blagojevich’s defense team laid the groundwork for a likely appeal. They filed several motions for mistrial that accused U.S. District Judge James Zagel of pro-prosecution bias, but he denied them.

From the beginning, the case against Blagojevich was fraught with political overtones, though even before his arrest the former governor’s once-promising career had been in a steep decline amid scandal, tanking poll ratings and public feuds with leaders of his own Democratic party.

Given the nature of the charges, critics of Obama eyed the case closely for any hint that that the president or his close associates -- among them new Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff -- had abetted Blagojevich’s attempts at wheeling and dealing.

But wiretaps and testimony showed an incoming White House both wary of Blagojevich and largely unresponsive to his attempts to land a cabinet post, ambassadorship or other lucrative post as the price for naming a senator to Obama’s liking.

In the end, jurors agreed with prosecutors that Blagojevich had tried to sell the Senate in a variety of ways, including an attempt to steer it to U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in exchange for $1.5 million in campaign cash promised by Jackson supporters.

Blagojevich was also convicted of several other shakedowns involving misuse of his official powers to raise campaign cash. The victims included a race track executive seeking swift action on a bill to benefit his industry and the CEO of Children’s Memorial Hospital seeking an increase in state-paid Medicaid reimbursement rates for pediatric specialists.