The Blagojevich Case: Who Won?

(Aug. 18) -- At first blush, Rod Blagojevich appeared almost Houdini-like, slipping out from under a weight of charges that seemed almost certain to bury the former Illinois governor.

A federal jury in downtown Chicago convicted him Tuesday on only one of 24 corruption counts -- one that involved lying to FBI agents in 2005. It deadlocked on the 23 others, including a key one -- that Blagojevich had tried to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama. Blagojevich vowed to appeal what he called the "nebulous" one count, which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. The jury deadlocked on all four charges against his brother Robert.

But did he really win? And did the prosecution lose? Depends who's talking.

"There's no doubt they brought 24 charges hoping to get 24 convictions," former District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr., a friend of Chicago's U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, told AOL News. "But they have a conviction. If you're the former governor and you now have a felony conviction, that's a bad situation."

Walter J. Piszczatowski, a former Detroit federal prosecutor, offers a different view: "I think the government is a loser, when they had all that time to investigate and they had tapes and all that information. They're the losers."

Then there's Blagojevich himself, who, with his trademark bravado, conveyed a sense of vindication, telling a throng of reporters on Tuesday that prosecutors "could not prove I did anything wrong."

Whatever the case, a closer look quickly shows that it may be far too soon to dub Blagojevich "the Teflon Rod" or grant him Houdini-like status. It's clearly not over. Or, in boxing terms, a rematch is in the making, and prosecutors have not given up on delivering a TKO.

Fitzgerald, who was the subject of some criticism in 2008 for making dramatic statements about the governor when first announcing the charges, was far more subdued Tuesday, but no less determined to nail Blagojevich on the central charges. He said the wheels are already in motion for a retrial.

The embarrassing outcome isn't likely to derail his office's confidence, those who know Fitzgerald say. In fact, the latest sign of its pit-bull determination came last week when, after two hung juries, it went for a third trial and convicted Internet talk show host Hal Turner of threatening the lives of three federal appeals court judges in Chicago who upheld the city's gun ban law. The jury deliberated only about two hours.

Prosecutors may also be emboldened to go after Blagojevich a second time after hearing that jurors had nearly convicted him on some of the counts that went to the meat of the case, including the allegations surrounding the Senate seat vacancy.

Jury foreman James Matsumoto, appearing on NBC's "Today" show this morning, said that some of the votes were 11-1 in favor of conviction but that a female juror held out, claiming Blagojevich was simply engaging in politics, not public corruption. One of those 11-1 votes reportedly involved the charge that Blagojevich had tried to sell Obama's former Senate seat.

"The argument was that he was a politician, he was talking to other politicians, sometimes his fundraisers, sometimes his chief of staff or deputy governors -- he was just talking," Matsumoto said of the dissenter. "She saw it as no crime was being committed, it was just talk, political talk. That was her position."

Matsumoto went on to endorse the government taking, so to speak, a second bite out of the apple, but emphasized the need to simplify and streamline the case.

"The major flaw was probably the complexity of the case, the amount of information that we had to digest, the length of the judge's instructions to us that we had to learn legal terms, we had to learn the law and how to apply it to the evidence that was given to us either in witness testimony or in wiretap conversations," he told NBC.

Melissa H. Maxman, a former federal prosecutor in Philadelphia, said of the prosecution, "I think you can learn a lot when you hang. They need to take the advice of the foreman."

But she added, "I always thought it was a good case for the government from what I read. I would have prosecuted it."

Piszczatowski, now a criminal defense attorney, said, "It's never fun to retry a case for either party. But the second time the government is going to have a little more of an advantage than the first time around. They can plug any holes in their case. Secondly, in this instance, they know some of the concerns of the jurors. They know what bothers the jury, and they can make the necessary adjustments."

If the government still has a good case, one of Blagojevich's attorney's certainly wasn't letting on to that.

Sam Adam Sr. called Fitzgerald "wild," "nuts" and "a master of indicting people for noncriminal behavior," according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

The Chicago Tribune editorial page decided to weigh in on the who-won, who-lost discussion, stating:

"Rod Blagojevich behaved Tuesday evening as if he had won a grand victory: The massed resources of federal investigators and prosecutors couldn't convince all 12 jurors of his guilt on 23 of 24 criminal counts. The defiance that has sustained him in the 20 months since his arrest didn't fail him as he stood before reporters and again proclaimed his innocence.

"In truth, Blagojevich awakens Wednesday as a convicted felon. The U.S. Department of Justice awakens determined to prove his complicity in many more crimes than the one count that's enough to send him to prison."