As you likely know by now, a federal jury deadlocked last week on all three corruption charges against Sen. Emil Jones III, D-Chicago. U.S. District Judge Andrea Wood declared a mistrial after polling individual jurors and arriving at the conclusion that they could not possibly reach a verdict.
When you think of the Chicago U.S. attorney’s legendary Public Corruption and Organized Crime Unit, the thing that immediately comes to mind is its hugely successful conviction rate — mid-to-high 90 percentile.
But the unit has run into some serious trouble lately.
In the last seven months, the U.S. attorney’s office has prosecuted 37 public corruption charges against four defendants — former AT&T President Paul La Schiazza, accused of bribing former House Speaker Michael Madigan; Madigan himself; Madigan’s top adviser Mike McClain and Jones.
The juries in those trials voted to acquit on seven charges (all Madigan) and deadlocked on another 20 charges.
Just 10 of those 37 charges have so far resulted in guilty verdicts (all Madigan), for a paltry 27% initial conviction rate — or 25% if you’re only counting the number of defendants.
Some of these charges could be prosecuted again, of course, and La Schiazza is scheduled for a retrial in early June. But an initial 27% conviction rate demands some serious introspection from the FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office. They obviously need to build better cases and then more competently prosecute them.
Like the La Schiazza case, the charges against Jones seemed to be too much of a stretch. The federal government’s mole, red-light camera company SafeSpeed’s co-founder Omar Maani, pushed Jones to come up with a dollar amount to contribute ahead of the senator’s campaign fundraiser. After Jones finally told Maani, “you can raise me five grand” and then asked for a job for his former intern, the mole turned the conversation to Jones’ legislative proposal.
A month later, Jones tried telling Maani that he didn’t necessarily have to cover $5,000 worth of expenses for a job fair — the workaround the FBI’s mole had asked the senator to come up with — but Maani cut him off before Jones could finish his sentence.
More importantly, the money never changed hands, and Jones never amended the bill that Maani was so concerned with. I could easily see why the jury would be divided.
The whole thing has also felt sloppy and slipshod ever since the trial began.
Sometimes, the errors were small. One of the federal prosecutors didn’t seem to understand how Jones arrived in the Senate. The prosecutor, for example, believed Jones was appointed to replace his father, former Senate President Emil Jones, but the senator was actually named to the ballot when his dad dropped out of the race.
The prosecution’s star witness, its mole Maani, bragged to the jury that he had been bribing politicians since his 20s, and told the jury that he gave $23,000 cash to a suburban mayor via one of the most influential Democratic attorneys in Cook County (neither of them have ever been charged). The alleged cash giveaway was intended to show Maani’s “appreciation.”
Maani was probably not the best witness, to say the least, particularly since prosecutors had no other real evidence indicating a pattern of corruption by Jones. The feds have never said why they chose to target Jones.
The overtly familiar, late-night phone texting evidence the feds introduced between Jones and his former male intern appeared, in my opinion, to try to out the senator as gay and seemed like a tactic from a dark, bygone era.
Even so, as Wood rightly reminded Jones at the end of the proceedings last week, he was not acquitted. His bond terms are still in place. The feds could come at him again in a new trial.
But before the U.S. attorney’s office makes its decision about whether to retry Jones or not, the top brass needs to figure out why they have had such a miserably low initial conviction rate lately.
I want as many public corruption convictions as possible. Lock them up if they truly deserve it. But confidence is undermined when the conviction rate falls so low.
Do better, please.
- Quibbler - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:00 am:
It’s certainly true that the U.S. Attorney’s office has had some prominent whiffs. But part of the problem is also that the U.S. Supreme Court has spent nearly a decade on a bipartisan mission to make public corruption cases very difficult to prosecute in all but the most comically extreme cases.
- Dan Johnson - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:06 am:
I hope they drop the case against Senator Jones in what was an obvious fishing expedition. Please spend our limited prosecutorial resources on organized crime and those who are in gun or human trafficking instead of headline-grabbing cases against elected officials.
- Telly - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:21 am:
== a paltry 27% initial conviction rate ==
And it could easily get worse than that on appeal.
- Amalia - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:22 am:
yes, I too have noticed they have not been doing well lately. with the vast amount of resources the Feds have and the small caseload, they should be doing better. the trial error you noted about appointed/elected is sloppy.
- DuPage Saint - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:53 am:
If the Feds can’t convict with all their resources they should have to pay the defendants legal fees. Maybe that would make them concentrate.
And now they don’t want to get restitution from Madigan? Why if he was a kid WTH weed in his car they would take the car.
- Mason County - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 10:58 am:
Hope your solid, informative piece in the Sun Times gets some attention and then some traction. Yes, it may be up to the Feds to do a thourogu investgation, and if appropriate, competent prosecution.
- TNR - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 11:15 am:
The most just outcome of this case would be for Jones to agree not to run for re-election in return for the Feds dropping charges.
- Shytown - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 11:51 am:
Wow. When you read this all in one place it’s kind of mind blowing. What a failure.
- Anyone Remember - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 12:06 pm:
===But part of the problem is also that the U.S. Supreme Court has spent nearly a decade on a bipartisan mission to make public corruption cases very difficult to prosecute in all but the most comically extreme cases.===
Actually, nearly 4 decades. McNally vs. United States (1987).
- @misterjayem - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 12:25 pm:
The feds did what they could with the evidence that they had, but the evidence that they had was weeeeeeeeak.
– MrJM
- West Sider - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 12:37 pm:
-the evidence that they had was weeeeeeeeak- alternatively- they attempted to lure a mope into criminality. Have I missed the intent part? I find it incredibly ironic that this was about red light cameras- which are themselves strategic entrapment. I cannot begin to understand how this furthers the cause of “justice”.
- Sue - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 1:07 pm:
TNR- why should Jones give up his seat- he is innocent ungil priven guilty
- Friendly Bob Adams - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 1:10 pm:
It seems that this was another instance of the feds deciding to go after someone, then manufacturing a means of charging that person.
I had not been aware of the text message evidence. That is just a rotten thing to do.
- Dotnonymous x - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 1:27 pm:
When the evidence is weak?…the case is weaker.
- N Shore Ned - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 1:28 pm:
Feds and State AG Raoul have been indicting suburban cops and the Monee Clerk for PPP fraud. Feds should just look at the various state and local IGs reports on COVID fraud and cherry pick the most high profile offenders. Electeds, top bureaucrats and cops.
Hard to lose those cases, but maybe the G will try to spend the next few years trying to get everyone involved to wear a wire on politically active hospital executives while doing some pink shaming.
- Happy Go Lucky - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 3:29 pm:
The incompetency crises grows stronger as now even the feds suffer from social decay.
Perhaps conviction rates used to be higher because the rank and file were of a better caliber.
- MyTwoCents - Monday, Apr 28, 25 @ 4:51 pm:
I wonder if the US Attorney’s office has partially contributed to the “Illinois is corrupt” drumbeat over the last few years. You have them and the FBI conducting investigations because of the reputation of Illinois. This results in indictments that don’t necessarily occur in other states because you don’t have the same investigations or stings targeting politicians. Those arrests & sometimes convictions lead to the investigations continuing and the cycle continues. Not that there aren’t corrupt politicians in Illinois, but it’s hard to say “Illinois is more corrupt then X state” if law enforcement isn’t actively targeting politicians in those states. It’s the same thing as the ethics laws in Illinois. Actions that are violating those laws in Illinois don’t necessarily violate ethics laws in other states.