*** UPDATE *** From Natasha Korecki’s Twitter feed…

Blagojevich jury leaves courthouse, ending day 9 without verdict. They’re back Monday.

[ *** End Of Update *** ]

* From Natasha Korecki’s excellent Blago Blog…

Some thought yesterday would be the day. Some thought it would have been last week, others were saying next week.

But this morning, I’ve heard several people give the same reaction: “I’m done guessing.”

Here we are, day 9 of deliberations in a case that prosecutors took 11 days to present and no sign from the Rod Blagojevich jury. No note since last Thursday.

We will mention that last year’s jury sent out two notes right away, then went eight days without making a peep. On day 11, the panel sent a flurry of notes before concluding they could not come to a consensus on 23 of the 24 counts.

In the retrial, there are 20 counts the jury of 11 women and one man must ponder. And significantly different this time: Blagojevich was on the witness stand for parts of seven days.

So they’re not only weighing witness testimony, transcripts, tapes and documents — but the defendant’s own words.

* It’s not quite the same, of course, but I’ve been through enough overtime sessions involving deadlocked leaders’ negotiations to have come to a simple conclusion long ago: Never try to guess when it’ll be over. Just go with the flow. Guessing will only drive you crazy.

I’ll never forget my first overtime session, in 1991. It lasted 19 days, but it seemed like forever. I didn’t have the sources that I do now, so I was pretty much in the dark about what was going on behind those closed doors. Some days, it looked to me like it was about over. Some days, it appeared that everything had completely fallen apart. I was almost tearing my hair out after two weeks.

* It’s always fun to speculate about things like whether 11 women on the jury will make a difference, or how this stacks up to the last Blagojevich deliberation, or how it compares to the George Ryan trial. The Ryan jury was a freaking mess, and it took them 10 days to reach a conclusion after the judge replaced two jurors and ordered everything be restarted. Nine days is really no big deal in that context.

It’ll happen when it happens and there’s nothing anybody can do about it.

* Meanwhile, Jim Krohe isn’t all that pleased with the way Blagojevich was charged…

Former presecutors, interviewed as experts during the first trial, explained to Chicago TV viewers that conspiracy is a crime if there’s evidence that two or more people take action to effect a criminal act, and that doing something as simple as picking up a telephone to bully a subordinate qualifies as such an action.

I cannot agree with some of the more fervent Blago backers, who insisted that the case was a setup. I do wonder whether a law that defines otherwise inconsequential talk as “action” reaches too far. Laws that make mere talking a crime are familiar weapons in government attempts to silence dissidents of all types. They have a long and inglorious history in Illinois, where they have been widely used by government agents to hunt down socialists and trade unionists and “Reds” in the 1880s, during World War I and again during the Cold War.

We don’t hunt Reds in Illinois, at least for the moment. We do hunt politicians. Corruption trials of the sort in which Illinois officeholders have figured so gloriously often have relied on laws that thoughtful Illinoisans might regard as dubious. A good example is the 1988 federal statute that made it a crime to “deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” It was widely used to punish self-dealing and conflicts of interest by government and corporate officials even, or rather especially, when those officials could not be shown to have received a direct quid pro quo in exchange for their actions. In effect they were charged with having committed what we might call (with apologies to Jimmy Carter) “bribery of the heart.”

Thoughts?