Blagojevich to seek U.S. Supreme Court ruling on delay
Attorneys for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich said Monday they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court today to delay the start of Blagojevich's corruption trial.
"We expect to be in the Supreme Court tomorrow," said defense attorney Sam Adam Sr. after a routine pretrial hearing, "on the question of whether the trial should go forward before we get a ruling on the honest-services (law)."
The announcement at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in Chicago follows the rejection last week by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals of Blagojevich's request to delay the trial from its scheduled June 3 start.
U.S. District Judge James Zagel has ruled the corruption trial should go ahead as planned. Lawyers for Blagojevich and his brother, Robert, say the trial should be delayed until after the U.S. Supreme Court rules on an "honest services" statute on which a portion of the indictment against the two is based.
They cite 10 other similar trials nationwide that have been granted such delays.
That ruling should come by the end of next month.
Zagel has issued an order finding the appeal "frivolous," siding with prosectors in their argument against a delay.
The "honest services" statute, saying public officials have an obligation to render "honest services" to the people they represent, has been used to convict disgraced former Illinois governors from George Ryan back to Otto Kerner. Yet Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia has led a movement to reconsider it, and a collection of cases arguing the constitutionality of the law was argued before the high court this term.
Blagojevich's attorneys said they will petition retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, who has jurisdiction over the U.S. District Court for northern Illinois.
The uncertainty, as Zagel urges the trial to proceed on facts with the law to be decided later, has led the judge to order that attorneys cannot even mention "honest services" in their opening statements. although in the actual hearing he said defense attorneys could use phrases such as referring to their client as an "honest man," adding, "I'm concerned with the use of the technical phrase."
Judge Zagel also granted defense requests to potentially play some of its own selections of the former governor's secretly taped conversations - if they add context.
"There's an astonishing amount of irrelevant conversation," he said. "It tends to be a waste of time."
He said he would rule on each defense request for additional tape to be played.
"The government wants to play snippets of the tapes and then say, 'Aha, see, he said this, that means he's guilty,'" said Blagojevich defense attorney Sheldon Sorosky afterward. "It is our position that if one looks at the totality of the tapes, one will see he's innocent.
"We don't want to play all the tapes. That's fiction. We merely want tapes played that are relevant to show the governor is innocent."
During the hearing, Zagel said a questionnaire had already gone out to potential jurors, with one of the questions asking if they thought they'd have time to serve 15 to 17 weeks on the panel. Sorosky was asked if he thought that was a good estimate for the length of the trial once it begins.
"If Judge Zagel says so, he knows better than I do," Sorosky replied.