 JoAnn Chiakulas, a retired state employee, turned out to be the lone
holdout standing in the way of a conviction of the ousted governor
on charges he tried to sell President Barack Obama's old Senate
seat.Nine days after jurors deadlocked on all but one charge
against Blagojevich, Chiakulas publicly defended her resolve for the
first time in an interview published Friday by the Chicago Tribune,
filling out a picture of tense juror deliberations and feeding
debate about her role.
Chiakulas, 67, stood by her vote, saying she found Blagojevich's
statements captured on FBI wiretap recordings so disorganized and
scattered that his actions did not amount to a criminal conspiracy.
"I thought he was just rambling," she told the Tribune. "I could
never live with myself if I went along with the rest of the jury."
Chiakulas, who had refused to respond to an onslaught of media
requests, including several from The Associated Press, answered some
but not all of the conjecture about her that arose after the verdict
-- from what her motives were to whether her past work as a state
bureaucrat somehow colored how she saw actions that Blagojevich
dismissed as routine political "horse-trading."
Chiakulas told the Tribune she had no prior bias toward
Blagojevich, and other jurors said they had no reason to believe she
wasn't deliberating in good faith. Jury consultants and attorneys
said her prior work for the state could have either helped or hurt
the defense.
"Blagojevich really wasn't that popular with state employees.
Maybe that's why prosecutors wanted to keep her (during jury
selection)," said Sheldon Sorosky, one of Blagojevich's defense
attorneys.
The jury in the Blagojevich case last week deadlocked on 23 of 24
counts against Blagojevich, convicting him only of lying to the FBI,
which carries a prison sentence of up to five years. On Thursday,
Judge James Zagel said Blagojevich's retrial would start the week of
Jan. 4, after prosecutors dropped charges against the former
governor's brother and co-defendant, Robert Blagojevich.
At the first trial, jurors deliberated for 14 days before the
judge declared a mistrial on those 23 charges. The jurors said they
had deadlocked 11-1 in favor of guilty on the more serious
allegations regarding the Senate seat.
Chiakulas, a resident of the Chicago suburb of Willowbrook,
worked from 1990 to 2000 as an employee of the state Department of
Public Health, where she ran a minority affairs program. She also
previously worked for the Chicago Urban League, where she oversaw a
youth counseling program called the Young Parents Center.
In the Tribune interview, Chiakulas said she decided the
prosecution had simply not proven its case, and that she had a
responsibility to follow her conscience. She said she did not
believe Blagojevich committed a crime with regard to Obama's
vacated Senate seat, but stressed that she did not necessarily find
him innocent.
She called him "narcissistic" and said she had ignored his many
media appearances, which she called "his shenanigans."
Chiakulas said she also became concerned because some key
witnesses against Blagojevich had cut deals with prosecutors before
testifying.
"Some people in (the jury room) only saw black and white,"
Chiakulas said. "I think I saw, in the transcripts and in the
testimony, shades of gray. To me, that means reasonable doubt."
She acknowledged tensions in the jury room as she held her
ground, with other jurors coming at her with different arguments and
one recalling how it brought tears to her eyes. Being the holdout
caused her a great deal of stress, Chiakulas said, describing how
she suffered headaches and stomach pains.
"I can't explain how badly I felt," she said. "I didn't sleep at
night. I thought about it on the train. I wanted to make sure my
reasonable doubt was reasonable."
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Chiakulas came across as highly intelligent, the foreman for the
jury, James Matsumoto, said on Friday. He said he didn't think
politics influenced how she assessed the evidence, but that her
familiarity with politicians through her state work may well have
led to her refrain that Blagojevich was "only talking."
"She would say, 'What I hear he's doing is he is just being a
politician,"‘ Matsumoto recalled. "In her job, she encountered many
politicians, and so she felt she would know more about the way they
spoke."
But John Lumpkin, who hired Chiakulas when he was director of the
Illinois Department of Public Health under former Gov. James
Thompson, a Republican, said it didn't necessarily follow.
"I think it all depends on your experience, whether or not you
ran into that," he said, adding that he didn't hear that kind of
talk when he led the agency.
Lumpkin said he wasn't surprised to learn that Chiakulas was the
holdout juror. "She would stand up for what she believed in," he
said.
During the nine days that Chiakulas remained silent after the
verdict, her name and biographical details circulated on the Web.
Among the details uncovered was that her politically active former
husband had given small donations to Blagojevich and his
father-in-law, Chicago Alderman Dick Mell, nearly a decade ago, but
she told the Tribune that was long after the two were divorced.
Legal experts disagreed on whether Chiakulas' profile would make
her someone either the defense or prosecution would have wanted to
eliminate from the jury pool.
During the trial, Chiakulas appeared attentive if deadly serious
and fastidious, often appearing in court in a dress while most
jurors wore jeans. When wiretap recordings were played, she followed
written transcripts in a black binder that lay across her lap.
On Friday, after declining to respond to repeated interview
requests, Chiakulas picked up her telephone when an Associated Press
reporter called. But she declined to speak in detail.
"I am exhausted," she said. "I've had a camera truck outside
since 5 this morning."
[Associated Press;
By MICHAEL TARM and DON BABWIN]
Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen in Chicago and John
O'Connor in Springfield contributed to this report.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or
redistributed.
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