Interesting Blago Article

The NY Times has an interesting article today on the Blagojevich saga I recommend you check out. The piece is interested in the distinction between criminal activity under the law and merely conducting political deal-making, which is quite common. The article raises the possibility that the evidence against the governor is not extremely strong.

Ever since the country’s founding, prosecutors, defense lawyers and juries have been trying to define the difference between criminality and political deal-making. They have never established a clear-cut line between the offensive and the illegal, and the hours of wiretapped conversations involving Mr. Blagojevich, filled with crass, profane talk about benefiting from the Senate vacancy, may fall into a legal gray area.[...]

“This town is full of people who call themselves ambassadors, and all they did was pay $200,000 or $300,000 to the Republican or Democratic Party,” said Mr. Bennett, referring to a passage in the criminal complaint filed against the governor suggesting that Mr. Blagojevich was interested in an ambassadorial appointment in return for the Senate seat. “You have to wonder, How much of this guy’s problem was his language, rather than what he really did?”

Personally, if I was the governor's lawyer, I would argue in court that all of Mr. Blagojevich's talk was simply bluster, and that it did not cross the line into criminal activity. On the one hand, there are legitimate arguments in favor of these positions, as the material in the indictment and on the tapes is so outrageous that it almost seems like it can't be real.

That being said, Blagojevich is still totally screwed. No Illinois jury is ever going to unanimously acquit him, regardless of the evidence presented. All Patrick Fitzgerald has to do is play these tapes over and over, and the governor is cooked. Forget potential jurors declaring their open minds at juror selection -- that's all baloney. Look at the Stevens trial: they convicted him in hours because the jurors were predisposed to convict him despite the fact that the evidence was thin. A cranky, old, white Republican from Alaska just did not cut a sympathetic figure in front of a Washington, D.C. jury, particularly since he was accused of political corruption. He was screwed solely because of where the trial was, and he knew it, as evidenced by his attempts to move the trial to Alaska (where, in reverse, the jury would have acquitted him without listening to the evidence).

Blagojevich's best hope may be getting a staunchly Polish or North Side citizen on the jury and getting a hung panel. Sadly for him, because this is a federal trial, the panel will be selected from people throughout northern Illinois.