* The Tribune’s profile of Sam Adam, Jr. reveals a very nervous man in anticipation of the Blagojevich verdict…
“I’m so nervous, I can’t eat. I can’t sleep,” he says. “I’m dead tired, so it’s tough to stay focused. I’m sort of a wreck.” […]
In the end, Adam says he gave “about 70 percent” of his planned closing. During his final argument Tuesday, Adam apologized to the jury for rambling. On Friday, three days later, he was still analyzing his performance.
“Of course you second-guess yourself,” he says. “I have nothing to do but wait. So I replay the entire trial in my head and wonder if I should have done something differently. But I believe I did the best I could.”
On Thursday, the first full day of deliberations, Adam says he sat in his Woodlawn office and watched his computer screen as a slideshow of his two children played on an endless loop. The jury sent a note around 10:30 a.m. apparently asking for the transcript of the prosecution’s closing. Adam says he and his father, Sam Adam Sr., who defended the case with him, spent an hour or so debating its possible meaning before deciding they couldn’t possibly know.
Watch the Trib’s video, though, and you see true torment. The Trib didn’t use some of the best Adam quotes…
“If we lose this case, to some degree it’s true it’s my fault.”
“I know that family. I know Annie, I know Amy, I know Patti, I know Rod, very well. And to think of what’s going to happen, it’s a very nervous thing… I’m living a case in which this man is going to be taken away from his babies. Taken away from his babies. Of course I’m nervous about that. And that my f-f-f-failures. or my bad decisions, or my ability, or should I say non-ability, to make the jury see what I see, of course that makes me nervous. If this happens it goes on me.”
“You very well may have a technical violation of the law. You may… All I can tell you is I did the best that I can… This is politics, this is politics as usual. Maybe I lose that argument, I’ll be the first to say ‘OK, I couldn’t make the sale.’”
