"The foreman said jurors came close to convictions on a number of the 24 counts — as close as 11-1 — but remained far apart on others.The jury also deadlocked on the four counts against Blagojevich's brother, Robert.At one point, Matsumoto said, jurors had reached agreement on a second count against Rod Blagojevich: No. "The person just did not see the evidence that everyone else did," said juror Stephen Wlodek. "They were very strong personalities," foreman James Matsumoto said of the jurors. They said further deliberations would not have mattered _ a second unanimous decision on a charge of attempted extortion evaporated shortly before the verdicts were to be read. Rod Blagojevich were, by their accounts, cordial and careful in their consideration of charges against the colorful politician, coming close to convicting him on many counts — including a plot to sell the Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama But after 14 days of deliberation, they were able to find unity on just one of the 24 counts. "Sarnello, a sophomore at College of DuPage studying criminal justice, said the main problem with the prosecution's case was that it was all over the place. ... You can't make somebody see something they don't see." The three jurors said there was agreement in the jury room that Fitzgerald's case was not as strong as it could have been, and Matsumoto and Sarnello said they were bothered by the complexities of the government's case. "It was hard to follow," Sarnello said. Matsumoto said he thinks prosecutors jumped the gun by arresting Blagojevich in December 2008, before he'd appointed someone to fill Obama's Senate seat. That to me was shocking," Matsumoto said.But in the end, he said, the "lack of a smoking gun" was too much of a hurdle for jurors to reach more than the one unanimous decision. As for the tapes, Wlodek said he was "shocked to hear your governor use language like that."
– The jury in the Rod Blagojevich trial came exceedingly close to convicting him on a host of charges, but were held back by a lone, intractable holdout, jurors told the press today. “The person just did not see the evidence that everyone else did,” Juror Stephen Wlodek told the AP. Another, 21-year-old Eric Sarnello, told the Chicago Tribune that the juror who held out “wanted clear-cut evidence, and not everything was clear-cut.” It’s unclear who hung the jury; Sarnello would only say that the holdout was female. He added that the prosecution’s scattershot case hadn’t helped. “It confused people,” he said. “They didn't follow a timeline. They jumped around.” Foreman James Matsumoto blamed the lack of a “smoking gun” for the mistrial, though he said he was ready to convict, and called the outcome “very frustrating.” Of the other jurors he says, “they were very strong personalities.”