Mob trial jury to get partial transcript
A judge agreed Friday to help jurors at Chicago's biggest mob trial in years refresh their memories about witness testimony by sending them a portion of the transcript.
U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel did not say what portion of the written transcript of the 10-week trial the jurors had requested.
The jury has already found all five defendants guilty of taking part in a racketeering conspiracy that involved illegal gambling, loan sharking, extortion and a wave of 18 murders stretching back 37 years.
Jurors are now trying to determine how much individual responsibility, if any, four of the defendants bears for specific murders listed in the indictment at the so-called Operation Family Secrets conspiracy trial.
If the jurors find that any of the four men are individually responsible for specific murders, those defendants will face a maximum of life in prison. The maximum sentence for racketeering conspiracy alone is 20 years.
The four men are James Marcello, 65; Frank Calabrese, 70; Joseph "Joey the Clown" Lombardo, 78, and Paul Schiro, 70. Retired police officer Anthony Doyle, 62, also was convicted on the racketeering count, but he is not accused of taking part in any of the murders.
Federal prosecutors said they had no problem with granting the request received from jurors on Thursday and sending the transcript to the jury room.
"The request is reasonable given the length of the trial," lead prosecutor Mitchell A. Mars told the judge.
But defense attorneys opposed the request.
"We don't want the transcripts to go back," said Schiro attorney Paul Wagner, speaking for all of the defense lawyers.
Prosecutors accused Schiro, a convicted jewel thief, of taking part in the June 1986 murder of Phoenix, Ariz., businessman Emil Vaci.
But attorneys declined to say whether the fact that Wagner was chosen to speak on behalf of the defense indicated that the portion of the transcript jurors wanted pertains to the Vaci murder.
After the jurors convicted all five defendants on Sept. 10, they met briefly the following day and then began a second round of deliberations in earnest on Sept. 12. But they took a week off starting last Friday and resumed their deliberations on Thursday. They broke for the weekend Friday and were to return Monday morning.
Late Wednesday, the judge said he thought the deliberations could take a considerable amount of time. But on Thursday, Zagel said there was no way to be sure and the decision could come "in 10 minutes or in 10 days."