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Zorn comes up with a very interesting point at his blog.
From the portion of our story this afternoon dealing with apparent confusion among federal jurors deliberating the fate of former Gov. George Ryan:One note (sent from the jury to Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer) said: “Dear Judge, Please provide further instruction on Count 1. Remaining 2-10 counts. We want to avoid any perceptions as to the meaning of (and or/ 10). Meaning, do we skip 2-9 and just go to 10 — should all be accounted for. Instructions ambiguous.'’…
Count 1 of the indictment charges the two men with the alleged racketeering conspiracy. The… note seemed to suggest that the jurors might be having trouble with a complex, 88-word sentence full of legalese on page 73 of the instructions. It was designed to tell them how the racketeering count relates to nine mail fraud counts that come after it in the indictment.
That sentence followed a rather stiff definition of the word “conspirator,” and it read like this:
Therefore, if you find defendant Ryan guilty of the conspiracy charged in Count 1, you should find defendant Ryan guilty of Count 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and/or 10, if you find the government has proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the offense in the count under consideration was committed (a) by his fellow conspirators in furtherance, and as a foreseeable consequence, of the conspiracy charged in Count 1, (b) while defendant Ryan was a member of the conspiracy charged in Count 1.
posted by Rich Miller
Friday, Mar 17, 06 @ 11:01 am
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Previous Post: Oberweis stretches the truth
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My opinion is that the jury is going to take the easy way out and not deal with the difficult and perplex issues of the trial and return a not guilty verdict on most all counts and nothing that would require jail time.
As nothing is black and white fraud or corruptiojn, the jury is having to request too much from the judge which means that they are not clear on what they are doing and may seek the easy way out by returning verdicts of not-guilty.
The governments case may have been too complicated for them with all the counts and all the charges against him and his co-defendant.
What the FEDERALLIES should have done was broke the charges down to clear black and white fraud and got rid of the circumstancial counts.
Black and White fraud is a no win for the defendant and is almost certain to return a guilty verdict.
I think the FEDERALLIES need to try again!
Comment by JUST FOLLOWING THE TRIAL Friday, Mar 17, 06 @ 12:23 pm
The prosecution completely botched this by throwing the kitchen sink at Ryan. These jurors are lay people.
Comment by Chicagograssroots Saturday, Mar 18, 06 @ 1:26 am