Kenyatta Johnson and Dawn Chavous bribery retrial: What you need to know

Five months after a federal jury failed to reach a verdict in their federal bribery case, Philadelphia City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson and his wife, Dawn Chavous, are headed back to court for a retrial.

Lawyers are scheduled to make their opening pitches to the jury Friday morning after picking a new 12-member panel to hear the case.

Here’s what you need to know:

» READ MORE: Kenyatta Johnson is headed back to court for his retrial on corruption charges. Will the jury reach a verdict this time?

After four days of deliberations in April, a jury of eight men and four women reported they were hopelessly deadlocked on the two counts of honest services fraud that Johnson and Chavous each face, prompting U.S. District Judge Gerald A. McHugh to declare a mistrial.

Though the exact split among that original panel remains unclear, one juror told The Inquirer that it was more than just a lone holdout standing in the way of a unanimous verdict. The group, the juror said, took several votes throughout their deliberations and while the numbers voting to convict or acquit changed slightly over time, they were never able to reach agreement.

» READ MORE: Inside the Kenyatta Johnson jury room: Juror details deadlocked deliberations in bribery case

But, he said, “at no point did we ever come to a unanimous decision on any charge for any defendant.” That failure set up the retrial scheduled to play out over the next four to six weeks.

Johnson, 48, a three-term incumbent on Philadelphia City Council, represents parts of Center City, Southwest, and his native South Philadelphia. Before he was elected to Council in 2012, he served for three years as a state representative.

Prosecutors say Johnson used his position in 2013 and 2014 to protect real estate holdings of Universal Companies, a South Philadelphia community development and charter schools nonprofit founded by legendary music producer Kenny Gamble. In exchange, they say, Johnson took bribes of more than $66,750 in the form of a “low-show” consulting job for his wife.

» READ MORE: Who is Kenny Gamble? From Philly soul to Universal Companies, here’s what to know.

Chavous, 42, is the founder and president of her own consulting firm, a charter school lobbyist, political consultant, and founder of the Sky Community Partners nonprofit, which helps to distribute state scholarships to public and private schools outside students’ home districts.

She has longstanding ties to State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams, for whom she worked for nearly a decade, rising in his office from aide to chief of staff. Eventually, she ran his 2010 gubernatorial campaign. It was while working in Williams’ office that she met Johnson, who was serving as an aide to the senator at the time. They married in 2012.

Prosecutors say she did “little, if any, discernible work” — an estimated 30-40 hours total over a 16-month span — for the money she received consulting with Universal.

Prosecutors say Johnson’s assistance on Council bailed Universal — and by extension Islam and Dawan — out of a financial jam. By 2014, the nonprofit was teetering on the brink of insolvency and in danger of losing potentially valuable properties it owned in the city.

For example, after a zoning change Johnson helped push through Council for the Royal Theater, a historic property on South Street that Universal bought in 2000 for $280,252, the nonprofit was able to sell the property to a developer for $3.7 million, more than 15 times what it had originally paid.

That same year, Universal faced potentially losing another parcel of properties it owned at 13th and Bainbridge Streets — land it purchased in 2005 at a cut-rate price of $3 under a contract with the city that required it to build 109 single-family homes on it within 18 months.

But eight years later, the land remained undeveloped, strewn with trash, and had become the subject of neighborhood complaints. When the city began the process to revoke Universal’s ownership, prosecutors say Johnson intervened to keep the land in the hands of the nonprofit.

Johnson and Chavous have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Their attorneys argue that there is no evidence that Chavous’ contract with Universal had anything to do with Johnson’s votes on matters involving Universal’s landholdings.

Chavous’ lawyer says she was qualified for her job at Universal as a leading education consultant, campaign adviser, and advocate for charter schools. She calls the notion that the contract with Universal was a payoff to her husband insulting, sexist, and demeaning.

Both prosecutors and the defense have said they’ve kept much of their respective cases the same.

Still, the government has made small adjustments — adding additional former Universal teachers and employees as potential witnesses, each with complaints about the management of the charter school nonprofit’s operations.

They also plan to present an analysis of the more than 500 bills Johnson has sponsored on City Council to show that a rezoning bill he sponsored for a Universal-owned property in 2013 was an outlier among his similar land use-related bills.

Johnson’s lawyer, Patrick Egan, said he largely expects to stick to his script from the first trial.

“The government’s theory doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “And the government doesn’t have any evidence.”

Most of the charges in the 22-count indictment are levied against Abdur Rahim Islam and Shahied Dawan, two Universal Companies executives accused of bribing Johnson and Chavous. They include counts of racketeering conspiracy, tax evasion and wire fraud.

Gamble — a music mogul-turned-developer and the founder of Universal Companies — is not charged in the case. Prosecutors have described him as a victim who fell prey to Islam and Dawan’s greed.

In addition to that bribery scheme, prosecutors have also charged Islam and Dawan with embezzling more than $500,000 from the Universal Companies nonprofit and with a separate bribery scheme involving a former school board president in Milwaukee, where Universal ran two charter schools.

The jurors will hear the bribery case involving Johnson and Chavous first, then the other allegations against the executives — and arrive at two separate verdicts.

Should the jury find them guilty, Johnson and Chavous would face up to 20 years in prison on each of the two counts with which they are charged. Johnson would also be forced to resign his Council seat, making him the second member of the body to do so this year due to a corruption conviction after former councilmember Bobby Henon stepped down in January.

Depending on the timing, that could open up a fifth vacancy on Council, which recently saw the departure in recent weeks of four other members who left to launch mayoral campaigns.