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Judge Zagel agrees that Blagojevich qualifies for substance abuse treatment

Thursday, Dec 15, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller

* A confidential report says the former guv had a substance abuse problem….

A probation report says ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be a “ripe candidate’’ for a drug treatment program in prison.

That’s according to defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky, who says he doesn’t know what Blagojevich said to a probation officer to lead to that conclusion.

Judge James Zagel has agreed to recommend Blagojevich for a drug treatment program when he starts his 14-year prison sentence for corruption in March.

More…

A prisons spokesman told the Sun-Times last week there typically has to be a documented history of abuse for an inmate to qualify.

[Blagojevich attorney Shelly Sorosky] said there is documentation. […]

The report came after a summer interview between Blagojevich and a probation officer, Sorosky said. Sorosky said he did not know the nature of what Blagojevich told the probation officer about substance abuse at the time — a few weeks after his June conviction — but it caused a recommendation to the judge.

I never saw the governor drink more than a tiny bit of alcohol, but, then again, I wasn’t around him that much in the evenings.

A successful completion of the program could shave a year off his sentence and allow him to go to a halfway house six months before the end of that sentence.

* Meanwhile, I can’t disagree with Scott Reeder’s conclusion…

Blagojevich soon will leave for prison, but the most lasting scars he left on the state may have nothing to with his criminality.

Amen.

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*** UPDATED x2 - Blagojevich gets extension *** Zagel demands reporter’s notes, documents

Tuesday, Dec 13, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller

*** UPDATE 1 *** From NBC5…

Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys on Tuesday requested a 30-day extension on the date the former governor must report to prison. Judge James Zagel granted the extension during a hearing at the Dirksen Federal Building.
Blagojevich’s new date is March 15.

During the hearing Blagojevich’s attorneys also made a request for which prison he’ll be sent to. They asked for Englewood, Colo.

[ *** End Of Update 1 *** ]

* This is not cool…

A federal judge ordered a Chicago Tribune reporter on Monday to turn over notes and other related documents concerning a juror who apparently concealed her criminal record in the William Cellini trial, a directive the newspaper called “unnecessary” and harmful to the independence of the reporting process. […]

During a brief hearing last week, U.S. District Judge James Zagel brought up the idea of compelling the Tribune to turn over its notes from a conversation with the juror before any of the lawyers in the case even raised the issue. The judge identified the juror in Monday’s ruling as Candy Chiles.

The defense argues that the Chicago woman compromised the verdict by concealing her criminal history and potential bias during jury selection. In an effort to bolster their position, Cellini’s lawyers sought access to notes of Tribune reporter Annie Sweeney from a brief interview with Chiles.

In his ruling issued late Monday, Zagel ordered that Sweeney “produce any and all notes, memoranda, tape recordings, documents, or other records, from Oct. 3, 2011, to present, of any conversations the journalist had with the juror” related to her previous criminal history or answers during jury selection.

I really don’t think judges ought to be nosing around in reporters’ notebooks. I asked Dick Ciccone, Cellini’s spokesman, about why they’d ask for such a thing…

It is simply to learn if the juror said anything about Cellini or the trial that did not appear in their stories.

* Tribune editor Gerould Kern’s response…

“Journalists must be free to ask questions and collect information secure in the knowledge that their notes will not be seized by the government or litigants in court and used for other purposes. Unfortunately, that security now is threatened by this ruling.

We believe that these subpoenas are unnecessary and in fact do harm to the independence of the reporting process. We are disappointed by Judge Zagel’s ruling, and we now are considering our options.

We do not know why this juror’s record or suitability for service were not ascertained earlier by the court. Had that occurred, we might not face this situation now.

We argued in our court filing that there are other, more direct sources of information available to learn about the juror’s record and actions. These include the court’s jury selection records, the juror herself, her friends and family, and her fellow jurors.

Public court records also are available to everyone in this case, as they were to us when we revealed the felony convictions in our Nov. 11 story. “

Thoughts?

*** UPDATE 2 *** Annie Sweeney tells us what happened when she talked to the juror in question…

Something has come up about you, I said. I am not here to judge, but we know about your convictions. And now there are questions about whether you were eligible to serve on the jury.

She began repeating the word no and indicated she did not want to be interviewed.

I continued talking. I was not taking notes.

She said she had nothing to say and told me to leave. She then made one brief remark that was not in direct response to a question. She said something about they should have known. I am not sure those were her exact words and I did not understand what she meant. I didn’t have an opportunity to ask her to explain it.

At some point I also asked her about her jury questionnaire in which she revealed she had a criminal history in her family but failed to put in the details.

She did not answer my questions and kept asking me to leave, so that’s what I did. The brief conversation ended before I could get a meaningful statement from her and I went to my car and wrote down my recollections of her remarks. They were not verbatim and not in perfect chronological order.

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Time for atonement

Monday, Dec 12, 2011 - Posted by Rich Miller

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column…

“I … I … I … I … I couldn’t fathom what I would say to those two girls,” U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald stammered last week when asked what he would say to Rod Blagojevich’s daughters after our former governor was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

It was impossible not to think of those little girls last week. Even some of the most hardened partisan Republicans I know felt no joy at Blagojevich’s long prison sentence because of those kids. I don’t know the children well, but I did spend some time with them a few years back, and I thought they were good kids, even normal kids, despite their father’s position at the time and the overall weirdness of their situation.

He didn’t dote on them much when I spent three solid days with Blagojevich and his family on a bus tour through Illinois in April 2007. The governor’s time was almost purely spent with me, his staff and others who jumped on and off the bus during those three long days.

After we’d been on the road a while and had dispensed with formalities, I decided I’d try to personally warn the governor that he was heading for serious trouble. The feds had indicted Tony Rezko and were in hot pursuit of the governor’s best friend, Chris Kelly. Their ultimate target was obviously the governor.

He had to radically clean up his act or they’d get him, I warned. I was as stern as I could be without raising my voice, for fear that his children, sitting just a few feet away, would hear. They didn’t need to know that I thought their dad was destined for prison.

A few hours later, Blagojevich surprised me by offering me a job. I smirked and tossed out the highest salary that came to mind. He said it could be arranged — in a tone that meant there’d have to be some subterfuge to get me all that cash. I immediately turned him down, explaining that he’d never listen to me anyway, so I’d probably quit and end up dead broke and pursued by the feds.

I knew Rod was just fantasizing that he could handle having somebody like me around. It was obvious that he never listened to anybody who didn’t constantly reinforce his own heroic notions about himself.

Right up until the end, he was always the good guy on the white horse, and everybody else was trying to bring the great man down. Remember when he demanded to know whether Fitzgerald was man enough to meet him in court? The guy just asked for it. It’s as if he wanted to be defeated.

Ironically enough, the insanity of the last three years seemed to make Rod Blagojevich a better father. He appeared to draw strength from his family, and they from him after his arrest, impeachment, trials and convictions. He seemed to become the doting dad, and his children, despite all the adversity, did better than most expected. But now what happens to them?

“It’s not like their name is Smith,” Blagojevich told the judge last week about his girls. “They can’t hide.”

No, they can’t ever hide. Even when their father’s villainy fades from the national memory, their name will haunt them wherever they go. And it’s really too bad because they didn’t deserve this fate. I hope they can learn to forgive him.

As for me, I don’t think I will ever forgive the man. What he did to his state, his party, his friends, his staff and his family justifies every day he’ll spend behind bars. His attorney, Sheldon Sorosky, defiantly pledged to appeal his client’s prison sentence, and Blagojevich told reporters “See you soon.”

He still doesn’t get it. He’ll never get it.

But we have to get it. We have to stop hiding from ourselves.

Illinois has to eventually come to terms with why it re-elected this guy knowing he was a crook. Our democracy was perverted by an attractive candidate with lots of slick TV ads.

Democratic Party leaders have to finally fess up that they cynically put keeping the governor’s office ahead of seeing a decent person elected.

The sycophants who kept telling told Blagojevich how great he was need to apologize. And his Republican Party enablers must stop lying about their involvement.

It’s past time for atonement.

Thoughts?

* Meanwhile, the Blagojevich saga is sparking some new high-tech thinking…

Like a swarm of angry bees, helicopters hovered around the Chicago courthouse Wednesday when former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich listened to his sentence of 14 years for corruption.

“I don’t know why we needed a real helicopter to do that,” said Brian Boyer, news applications editor for the Chicago Tribune.

Instead of the expensive helicopters so many news organizations use for breaking news events, Boyer and other journalists have begun envisioning using cheaper, unmanned aircraft to capture video and photos.

Such aircraft have long been associated with military use in the Middle East, both as smart weapons and surveillance tools. Now, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor wants to consider their use for journalism.

* Related…

* Epiphany about Blago: The chorus of man-on-the-street interviews since Blago’s sentencing include some variation of this line: “I feel sorry for his two children.” So what does Blagojevich do, on the first Friday night after being handed his lengthy prison sentence? Knowing that the news crews in front of his house would follow, he takes his wife and two children out to pick up a second family dog. The Blago girls that everyone has said they feel so sorry for, are right there on the TV news and in the papers — needing another puppy to deal with daddy’s disgrace. If you had just been humiliated — dressed down raw by a federal judge who castigated you for grandstanding — would you climb back up on the pedestal as did Rod? And would you pull up your kids to stand there with you?

* Nation, not just Illinois, will cover Blagojevich’s costs: Between his prison sentence and congressional pension, former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will cost taxpayers about $350,000 over the next 12 years, the minimum time he will have to serve on his 14-year corruption sentence.

* Rod Blagojevich’s strangest moments

* Blagojevich legacy clouds Illinois’ reputation

* Editorial: A smart reform right now: fund judicial elections

* Editorial: Blagojevich’s sentencing just start, not an end

* A few (slightly delayed) thoughts on Blago’s sentence

* Warren: When Privilege Trumps Justice

* First Illinois governor to do time was known as ‘Mr. Clean’ - Unrepentant Otto Kerner served 7 months for racetrack scandal

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