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Blagojevich Appears At Chicago Comic Con
theodp writes "Earlier this week, a federal jury convicted Former Ill. Gov. Rod Blagojevich of lying to the FBI and deadlocked on 23 other charges. Still, that didn't stop Blago from connecting with his 'loyal supporters' Saturday at the Chicago Comic Con, where the ex-Gov charged $80 for each photo taken with him and $50 for autographs. He even hob-knobbed with celebrities like Adam West and Richard Roundtree. 'I met Batman. I met Shaft, and I know something about getting the shaft,' Blagojevich said."
He was not found not guilty. He was convicted on one of 24 counts and the jury deadlocked on 23 counts. A deadlocked jury doesn't count as an acquittal or a conviction, and he can (and most likely will) be retried on 23 counts.
Welcome to the land of "jury selection."
Essentially, each side only gets so many challenges. They can try to challenge for cause, but they get only a few "peremptory challenges" (removing someone they are worried about without saying why). Further, the peremptory challenges are restricted because you have to be extremely careful about striking certain people lest someone scream about "racism", "sexism", "ageism", etc.
Most likely, since the woman was not a "direct employee of Blagojevich", the judge ruled that she couldn't be struck from the jury with cause even though she was one of his former campaign workers, since campaign work is often a paid position and they could argue that it was "just a job." That would have meant that it would burn a peremptory challenge to get her removed, and there were probably some people the prosecution wanted on the jury even less that they'd already used all their peremptories on.
The other thing that potential tampered/"ringer" jurors trying to slip into a case like this will pull is trying to put themselves at the back of the line. Remember, voir dire works in sequential order, either one juror at a time or banks-of-twelve at a time. If the prosecution had already used up all their peremptories by the time she came up in the process, they were stuck with her.
Rupert Murdoch just made a huge donation to the Republican party to elect Republican candidates in gubernatorial races. He's also an individual who's been known to bribe the odd politician here and there. When he purchased his American media holdings, he wasn't at the time legally allowed to do it due to a ban on foreign ownership of the media. A suspiciously large book advance to Newt Gingrich and a bit latter he's legally owning a media conglomerate. And since then his "news" organization has been overtly advocating for conservative candidates, which is an absolute no-no for a news organization to do.