(UPDATED) Inherit The Windbag: All Eyes On The Jury

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Aug 12, 2010 6:20PM

We'd be lying if we said we were completely caught off guard by yesterday's news that jurors in the Blagojevich corruption trial were deadlocked. After all, there have been so many twists and turns in this entire ordeal that it would take a lot to shock us. Still, this is a new wrinkle to the case and we won't know more for a few hours. A hearing will be held this morning at 11 a.m. during which jurors will have to explain which counts they're currently split on so they can get the "guidance" they've asked for from Judge Zagel. After that? Per the Tribune:

If the jury is divided on only a portion of the counts and has come to terms on the others, the prosecution and defense teams can decide whether to accept the verdict on counts the panel agrees on and have a mistrial declared on the others. If they remain divided on the entire case, the judge most likely will order them to keep deliberating, at least for a time, legal experts said.

Former governor Rod Blagojevich faces 24 different counts in the trial while brother Rob faces four.

UPDATE: Updating our earlier post, we now know where the jury stands after 11 days of deliberation and ... well, there's still a long way to go. The jury has only reached a verdict on two counts against Blago while remaining deadlocked on several others but haven't even gotten to the wire fraud counts (which involve the Senate Seat sale). Judge Zagel instructed the jurors to move on with the 11 wire fraud counts. In his note, Zagel said:

“You should deliberate on the wire fraud counts to the extent necessary to enable you to decide on those counts. We recognize that your stated inability to reach agreement on other counts may have established to your satisfaction that you would be similarly unable to reach unanimity on some or all of the wire fraud counts. Nonetheless, a deliberative decision by you on each of those counts should be made, even if it is a decision that you cannot reach unanimity on any of those counts.”

There's no way to know what counts the jurors have already reached a verdict on or how many they remain deadlocked on. And so our wait continues.