Prosecutors move to drop Cellini from Blago trial
Prosecutors asked a federal judge Friday to drop millionaire power broker William Cellini from Rod Blagojevich's corruption trial, while the former governor asked that the trial scheduled or June be postponed for months.
U.S. District Judge James B. Zagel is likely to grant the motion, which would allow for a separate trial but not dismiss any charges, because Cellini's lawyers have been seeking the same thing.
Cellini, a Springfield lobbyist-businessman for decades viewed as one of the most influential behind-the-scenes men in Illinois politics, is charged with attempting to extort a payoff or hefty contribution for the Blagojevich campaign from a Hollywood producer whose money management firm did business with the state.
A message was left for Cellini's chief defense counsel, Dan K. Webb, whose office said he was traveling. Randall Samborn, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, declined to comment.
Dropping Cellini from the trial would mean only Blagojevich and his brother, Robert Blagojevich, would still face a set trial in the case that includes allegations the former governor tried to sell President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
Two key former Blagojevich aides, Alonzo Monk and John Harris, have pleaded guilty and the former governor's one-time top fundraiser, Christopher G. Kelly, died of an apparent suicide in September days before he was to go to prison.
Prosecutors said in court papers that "following the guilty pleas of Harris and Monk and in the light of the unexpected death of Kelly, the government now agrees that a severance is warranted."
"In particular, it was the allegations and evidence against Kelly that provided much of the rationale to keep the defendants together in one trial," they said.
"As the government no longer needs to prove the allegations against Kelly, who was integrally involved in the activities underlying the charges against both Cellini and Rod Blagojevich there is now significantly less overlap in the evidence the government anticipates would be introduced against Rod Blagojevich and Cellini," the prosecutors said.
They said the risk of prejudice to Cellini from being in the same trial with Blagojevich outweighs the cost of providing him with a separate trial.
Meanwhile, Blagojevich's attorneys filed court papers saying it would make sense to postpone the trial from its scheduled June 3 start to September while awaiting a U.S. Supreme Court decision on a key part of the charges.
The Supreme Court is weighing the so-called honest services fraud law that figures heavily in the Blagojevich indictment. The court has agreed to hear arguments in appeals of the law filed by former newspaper mogul Conrad Black, one-time Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling and former Alaska state Rep. Bruce Weyhrauch -- all of which argue the law is too vague.
The court had previously declined to take a similar appeal Robert Sorich, a Chicago official known as Mayor Richard M. Daley's patronage chief. Sorich and three other men were convicted of depriving the city of their honest services by using fraud in the hiring of city employees.
Justice Antonin Scalia said in a written dissent in that case that the law is so unclear a mayor who used his political clout to get a good table at a restaurant could be charged with honest services fraud.
Zagel has scheduled a Monday hearing in the Blagojevich case, but there was no assurance he would rule on either the 0severence for Cellini or trial postponement then.