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

With their retrial looming on federal bribery charges, City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson and his wife, Dawn Chavous, took the stage at a Southwest Philadelphia church earlier this week in front of a congregation praying for their acquittal.

An electric church organ wailed. A pastor anointed them both with blessings. And Johnson addressed the crowd of roughly 150 supporters — including several of his Council colleagues — that had gathered at Yesha Ministries to wish him well.

“I’m not bitter about the process — the process is going to be the process,” he said, quoting Isaiah 54:17: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.”

The couple may have prayer on their side. But, this time, can they win over a jury?

They’ll find out soon enough. Jury selection began Wednesday in the case that once again threatens to make Johnson — a three-term Democrat from Point Breeze — the second City Councilmember to lose his seat due to a public corruption conviction in less than a year.

The proceedings come five months after a previous jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict on charges that Johnson accepted more than $66,000 in bribes between 2013 and 2014 to aid a financially struggling nonprofit desperate to hold onto real estate holdings in his district.

The evidence is the same. The witness lists remain largely unchanged. But as they prepared for their rematch in federal court this week, both sides say they are confident of a different outcome: a verdict in their favor.

“I don’t think the evidence stands up to scrutiny,” said Johnson’s lawyer, Patrick Egan. “The councilman feels very strongly that we will prevail.”

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

Prosecutors, meanwhile, like their chances, too, and have spent the summer shoring up their case.

During the five-week first trial this spring, they sought to prove that Johnson had accepted payoffs — in the form of a consulting contract for Chavous — from two executives at Universal Companies, the South Philadelphia community development nonprofit and charter school operator founded by renowned music producer Kenny Gamble.

They maintain Chavous did next to nothing for the money she was paid. And in exchange, they say, Johnson used the powers of his office to twice intervene on Universal’s behalf, protecting properties it owned from seizure and passing zoning legislation that substantially increased the resale value of another.

The case prosecutors presented the first time relied largely on circumstantial evidence, such as bank records, emails, and invoices, which they said left little doubt that bribery had occurred. Payments made to Chavous roughly coincided with Universal’s appeals to Johnson’s office for his assistance.

“It’s the same way you know it’s raining,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dubnoff said in his closing argument this spring. “When someone comes inside with a raincoat and umbrella and they’re both dripping wet.”

But the government’s efforts were stymied at times by its own witnesses, some of whom offered testimony that ran counter to the government’s case.

Several Universal employees testified that despite assertions that Chavous didn’t earn the money Universal paid her, she’d been an asset to the nonprofit’s charter school operations. A noted charter school advocate, former chief of staff to State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams and a politically connected consultant, Chavous, they said, brought a wealth of fund-raising experience and contacts to the organization.

» READ MORE: Kenyatta Johnson: Day-by-Day updates of the first federal bribery trial

Chavous’ attorney Barry Gross has maintained that his client’s contracting work with Universal had nothing to do with her husband’s work on Council, and he blasted the government’s insistence to the contrary as sexist and demeaning.

“We feel very strongly that Ms. Chavous should have never been charged in this matter,” he said in an interview this week. “We hope the jury finds the same way.”

Meanwhile, much of the government’s case will remain the same, prosecutors said as they outlined their plans for the retrial in a recent court filing. They’ve made small adjustments — adding additional former Universal teachers and employees as potential witnesses, each with complaints about the management of Universal’s operations.

They also plan to present an analysis of the more than 500 bills Johnson has sponsored on City Council since he was first elected in 2012.

Of those, prosecutors said, only 47 concerned real estate matters in his district — almost all of which were rezoning ordinances to conform with the Philadelphia Planning Commission’s citywide plan known as Philadelphia 2035.

Of the seven that involved rezoning outside of that master plan, all but one involved large-scale projects like the Live! Casino in South Philadelphia, the Roberts Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the high-rise Hyatt Centric hotel.

The only smaller-scale rezoning Johnson has advanced through a council ordinance, prosecutors say, was a bill Johnson filed in 2013 to rezone the old Royal Theater property on South Street — a historic Black movie palace that had fallen into disrepair and that Universal had struggled to redevelop for 14 years.

The structure was on the verge of collapse when the nonprofit purchased it for $286,252 in 2000 with plans to revive it as an entertainment venue. Within a year of securing Johnson’s assistance in getting the site rezoned for mixed-use development featuring apartments and retail space, the nonprofit sold it for $3.7 million — more than 12 times what it originally paid.

But if the government’s additional evidence concerns them, Johnson and Chavous have shown no sign.

Since the ambiguous ending to their first trial, Johnson has redoubled his efforts at City Hall, championing a major property tax overhaul in June at the center of this year’s budget negotiations. Over the summer, he hosted tax relief workshops in his South and Southwest Philadelphia District, four antigun violence walks, and a basketball tournament.

And he continues to enjoy the support of many of his colleagues in city government, including Council President Darrell L. Clarke; Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier, Isaiah Thomas, and Katherine Gilmore Richardson; former Councilmember-turned-mayoral candidate Cherelle L. Parker; ex-Councilmember Jannie Blackwell, and State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.) — all of whom joined him and Chavous at the Yesha Ministries “Pre-Trial Victory Prayer Service” on Monday.

“We will be OK,” Chavous said addressing the crowd, “because we are serving something that’s much higher.”

The stakes, however, are clear. Should they be convicted, they’re facing up to 20 years in prison on each of the two counts of honest services fraud with which they are charged.

Johnson would be forced to give up his seat — opening another vacancy on a City Council that has seen four resignations in recent weeks as members have left to launch mayoral campaigns.

» READ MORE: There are four vacancies on Philadelphia City Council, and more could be coming. Here’s what happens next.

After last week’s session of Council, Johnson sought to assure his constituents that his office “won’t miss a beat in terms of representing them.”

“I look forward to continuously being their Council person, doing their work,” he said, adding after a pause, “with the grace of God.”