Reply #15: My gut feeling is he banked on Blago taking the stand.

[riderinthestorm]

And proving to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that he's corrupt just by his actions, words and implication of how Blago is. I know that's nebulous but those of us in IL understand that Blago's bloviating makes him look guilty as hell and if Fitz had gotten him on the stand, the jury would have been so repulsed the charges would have seemed more plausible.

As it is, once Blago declined to take the stand, Fitz essentially "lost".

They aren't deadlocked on 2 charges. They are deadlocked on 10. They have 11 more to debate. I'm guessing those two charges are guilty. Fitz looks like a hero for nailing ANY Chicago politician to the wall on any charge (and all Chicago pols are ALL corrupt dare I say it, including probably Obama with the Rezko thing. Nobody gets to the top of IL politics without stains.) I honestly don't think Fitz will take any hit at all if he can get Blago to jail for any length of time. That's all IL voters remember anyway - that he got sent away for some time period. Imho doesn't matter how long, its that he did some time in jail. Justice served for getting caught doing Chicago style politics - not that he actually WAS doing Chicago style politics, all's forgiven for that since it's status quo here - just that he got caught.