* Click here for yesterday’s coverage. Capitol News Illinois…
A federal judge on Thursday declared a mistrial in the case of state Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago, after a jury deadlocked in their deliberations over whether Jones agreed to take bribes from red-light camera entrepreneur-turned-government cooperator Omar Maani in 2019, then lied to the FBI about it.
The senator, who’s served 16 years in Springfield since he replaced his father — former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr. — was charged with three counts of bribery and lying to the FBI. Before they began deliberating Monday, jurors heard eight days of arguments, evidence and testimony, including from Jones himself.
The jury sent an initial note indicating they were at a stalemate on two of the counts late Wednesday, which was met with a legally required instruction from the judge encouraging further deliberations Thursday morning. But nearly 23 hours into deliberations early Thursday afternoon, the jury sent another note telling the judge they’d deadlocked on all three counts.
After polling individual members of the jury while white noise blasted through the courtroom’s speakers, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood said the majority of jurors believed further deliberations would be unlikely to change anything.
The judge then declared a mistrial over the objections of Jones’ attorneys, who wanted the jury to keep deliberating. […]
On his way out of the courtroom, Jones remarked that now he’d have to “go back to work.”
* Sun-Times…
“We did as much due diligence as any jury could,” said one juror, who didn’t want to be named, in a text message to the Chicago Sun-Times. “A group of caring and highly educated people. In the end, some just didn’t feel there was a smoking gun.”
After declaring the mistrial, U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood scheduled a status hearing for June 10. That’s when lawyers are expected to discuss with her what should happen next. […]
A second juror, who also asked not to be named, told the Sun-Times the deliberations featured “a lot of very careful, very detailed, very deliberate discussions about each of the counts.”
“I think everyone in the room understood the gravity and the seriousness of the charges,” the juror said, “and I think everyone was committed to doing the right thing based on the information they had.”
* Tribune…
Flanked by his attorneys as he left the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, Jones, 46, thanked the judge, jurors, his attorneys and prosecutors. The son of former Senate President Emil Jones Jr., he was the first sitting member of the state General Assembly to have a jury trial at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse since then-state Rep. Derrick Smith was found guilty of bribery nearly a decade ago.
“I look forward to another fight,” Jones said. […]
After the trial ended, Emil Jones Jr. said he believes in his son’s innocence, though carefully declined to weigh in on whether the government should drop the case.
“They couldn’t win this time. I can’t think of what they should do. I know what they should do, but I won’t even say it,” he told the Tribune.
- Arsenal - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 9:38 am:
We can and should talk about the Feds’ repeated sloppiness in these cases, but also, at some point, I have to ask if they ever really had the goods.
- Barbie - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 9:38 am:
This was a tough case and in the end seems like a waste of taxpayer money. Tiffany Henyard and the only other current Super Mayor have collected far more personal benefits than Emil did in this case and yet they remain uncharged with the remaining Super Mayor continuing to walk around collecting excessive campaign donations in exchange for contracts in his village and township. Public corruption has become muddled and confusing much to the detriment of the people.
- Donnie Elgin - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:02 am:
Respect the verdict - Constituents can hardly be proud of the behavior that came about Sen. Emil Jones III.
- Paddyrollingstone - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:05 am:
The defense attorneys appear to have done a terrific job and the decision for Jones to take the stand seems to have been the correct call. Congrats to his lawyers.
- hisgirlfriday - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:07 am:
I suspect the background cognitive dissonance of the times we live in may be having an effect on jury decisions when it comes to these public corruption cases.
Here we had the feds prosecuting Jones III for bribery scheme that allegedly involved Jones III getting a whopping $5,000 and a job for an intern.
Meanwhile, we have news reports in the past week about our convicted felon president offering up White House dinners in exchange for $TRUMP crypto coin purchases. That is in addition to this week’s pardon of a Las Vegas councilwoman convicted of scamming donors to a veterans charity so she could use the money on plastic surgery… itself part of a pattern of Trump pardoning a bunch of criminals because they are/were his friends and political supporters.
And that’s not even getting into the ways that SCOTUS has come down with several pro-bribery rules in recent years.
I am not surprised if at a certain point jurors throw their hands up and nullify prosecutions of public officials if they view it all as arbitrary enforcement or otherwise a waste of their time.
- Interested Bystander - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:33 am:
How much of this, and the failed counts against others, is due to sloppiness and how much is due to Illinoisans being inured to “business as usual?” Feels like a lot of us channel Captain Renault when these cases surface.
- walker - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:37 am:
Thank you to the jurors for doing a thorough and responsible job.
My own experience on juries (admittedly a tiny sample), has ben similar. What great American tradition.
- Friendly Bob Adams - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:44 am:
This is such a small potatoes case the feds should announce soon that they don’t intend to re-try Jones.
- *Ducks* - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 10:56 am:
“Constituents can hardly be proud of the behavior that came about Sen. Emil Jones”
Why, because he got hustled by a confidence man in a ham handed effort to entrap him? A lot of readers of this blog need to come to grips with the idea legislators’ default setting isn’t corrupt. And when you’re consistently put in positions of being asked, you have to make snap judgements and do the best you can. This isn’t a lionization of Threemil, but I think there’s a writ large thirst for legislators to be *guilty of something* and these last few years have demonstrated — with tapes rollout — the world in which they live is full of outside operators and the lines are always blurred. Good old fashioned graft is easy to prove. Anything short of that and it gets hazy in a minute.
- Lincoln Steffens - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 11:32 am:
=== Constituents can hardly be proud ===
I am willing to bet $100 you are not a constituent.
Let’s look at it the other way around though.
Advocates for good government have been put in the awkward position of defending Senator Jones and criticizing the US Attorney’s Office for the attempted railroading of a Black elected official.
Our justice system operates on a razor’s edge of morality that says that its better that nine innocent men walk than one innocent man go to jail.
And I am going to be the one to point out the obvious that it has been beaten into every potential jurors head by the media and Republicans that all politicians are corrupt, all Chicago politicians are corrupt, all Black Chicago Democrats are corrupt.
I know this, you know this, and the US Attorney’s office knows this, which is part of the the reason why the US Attorney is not investigating the mayor of Aurora who has been accused with currying far bigger donations and favors. The other reason? Because the Mayor of Aurora cannot lead them to whomever they thought Emil Jones could eventually lead them.
And yet, with all that wind in their sails, the inherent bias of the jury pool, they could not make the case because the underlying facts were not there. They asked the jury to take more leaps of faith than a trapeze artist.
I, like Rich, would like to see the US Attorney adopt a more rigorous standard for prosecution. Before we are relying almost solely on jury bias to secure the conviction of innocent men, which I believe nearly happened in this case. And I have to salute Senator Jones for his courage to risk his liberty to expose precisely how weak the case was against him and how much the US Attorney is relying on bias. I also commend the jury for not simply caving in to preconceptions and closely examining the facts of the case.
I also would like to see them put half this much energy into stopping the illegal flow of guns into Illinois, and I hope that someone will start asking questions about how they spend they spend their time and money.
- Peoples Republic of Oak Park - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 11:47 am:
This felt like they were using Maani to get a big name elected and is just never panned out.
- DQ - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 11:51 am:
You must have missed the part of Omar’s testimony where he said literally every public official he dealt with expected a bribe before they approved a red light camera
- Rich Miller - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 11:57 am:
===You must have missed the part of Omar’s testimony===
And yet, how many of those people were put on trial?
- Henry Francis - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 12:27 pm:
Emil is no big fish and the $5k was small potatoes in this neck of the woods. I wonder how much of Emil’s backing out of the proffer and refusing to wire up against Egan is why USA’s office took this to trial.
- Rich Miller - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 12:32 pm:
===I wonder how much of Emil’s backing out of the proffer and refusing to wire up===
As somebody said yesterday, Threemil may have paid a “won’t flip tax”
- Lincoln Steffens - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 12:51 pm:
=== every public official he dealt with expected a bribe ===
=== how many of those people were put on trial? ===
Exactly my point.
Maani has not been put on trial.
20 years worth of White, suburban mayors are not being put on trial. Unless the Feds believe they can lead to bigger fish in Chicago.
Even Ed Burke, one of the most notoriously corrupt insiders in Chicago, was not prosecuted until the feds were approached by the victim of a a shakedown in a case whose facts were so blatantly obvious that they could not ignore it. Did the Feds ever send Maani knocking on Burke’s door, and if not, why not?
- Socks McGee - Friday, Apr 25, 25 @ 1:01 pm:
The “won’t flip tax” comment is spot on.
That coupled with something akin to jury nullification is likely at play.
Not as auspicious beginning for the interim US Attorney.