Defense, prosecution use contrasting styles to open Blagojevich trial

Rod Blagojevich's defense attorney Sam Adam Jr. depicted the former governor as an innocent, yet insecure, man who meticulously followed rules but was duped by corrupt aides he trusted too much.

Adam, in revealing the defense strategy during Tuesday's opening arguments in Blagojevich's corruption trial, painted an unflattering picture of his client, calling him "probably one of the most insecure men you're ever going to see" and saying "the governor's judgment is horrible."

Adam's fiery address to the jury came at the end of the day, after Assistant U.S. Attorney Carrie Hamilton coolly laid out the government case.

"When he was supposed to be asking, 'What about the people of Illinois,' he was thinking, 'What about me?'" she told the jury in U.S. District Court in Chicago.

The opening statements followed final jury selection in the morning, with 12 jurors and six alternates - 11 women and seven men - sworn in to hear a case that could last 17 weeks. Prosecutors bring their first witnesses today, beginning with FBI agent Dan Crain and former Blagojevich Chief of Staff Lon Monk, a law-school roommate of Blagojevich and groomsman at his wedding who pleaded guilty to wire fraud last year.

During his animated, expressive oration lasting over an hour, Adam blamed Monk and Blagojevich fundraiser Tony Rezko for the corruption, and turned the tables on the government's assertion that Blagojevich was personally desperate for money at the end of his administration as proof that he was honest.

"He's broke!" Adam said. "He didn't take a dime."

In between, Michael Ettinger, defense attorney for Robert Blagojevich, depicted the former governor's brother as an honorable man who followed all rules as head of Friends of Blagojevich in the latter half of 2008, up to the governor's arrest.

Hamilton opened her statement with the charge that both Blagojevich brothers conspired to hit up Children's Memorial Hospital President Patrick Magoon for a $25,000 campaign contribution after the governor steered a $10 million grant to the hospital.

"This was just one in a series of illegal shakedowns," Hamilton said. She went on to lay out seven basic incidents in the 24-count indictment, repeatedly using graphics to map out how Blagojevich would do some government business, then a "middleman" from his "inner circle" would seek compensation.

"The message was clear," Hamilton said. "Pay up or no state action."

Altering his pitch and intensity from a whisper to a shout, with animated, oversize gestures and his expressive eyebrows, Adam depicted Blagojevich as someone duped by his own aides and "insecure" about how to do his job to the point where he was meticulous about following the rules of political fundraising.

Adam cast Rezko and Stuart Levine, accused of executing kickbacks on a pension deal, as a pair of Bernie Madoffs running competing Ponzi schemes. "They happened to be two people who fooled everybody," Adam said. He said he'd show that Monk hid his malfeasance from Blagojevich, thus proving the governor was on the square. "He ain't corrupt," Adam said.

"The governor made a mistake," he added. "The governor's judgment is horrible."

He slipped in the self-deprecating joke that he hoped the jury wouldn't show the same in Blagojevich's choice of attorneys with its eventual decision.

He portrayed Blagojevich as someone who delegated authority and then was ill-used. "He's a big-idea guy," Adam said, "and Rezko took advantage of that. Levine took advantage of that."

He insisted Patti Blagojevich earned the fees she was paid by Rezko's real-estate company. "She's a good woman, and she loves her man," Adam said.

Turning to the Children's Memorial charge, Adam played a gambit for Blagojevich. "You're going to find out that he was cheating on Patti," he said. "He loved the Cubs like nobody's business."

Adam insisted a call from former Cub manager Dusty Baker on behalf of the hospital got Blagojevich to free up the $10 million at a time that he was dealing with budget cuts. He said the governor was in earnest, not looking for a convenient excuse, when he was later wiretapped asking if the money could be pulled back for budget concerns.

Adam made a point of mentioning Magoon's $913,000 salary in a clear attempt to undercut sympathy for him and the hospital.

Ettinger used a more homespun style to depict Robert Blagojevich as not a middleman but simply caught in the middle, although he allowed his voice to rise in telling the jury, "You will not hear one scintilla of evidence that he shook anyone down," going on to add he "never, ever conditioned anything on anything."