Jurors weigh Blagojevich's fate

CHICAGO - Rod Blagojevich's fate is in the hands of a jury a second time, after a day of courtroom dramatics and even tears during final arguments at the ousted Illinois governor's retrial on corruption charges.

Jurors heard the prosecution describe Blagojevich as an audacious schemer who lied on the witness stand. The defense countered that the government showed only that Blagojevich talks a lot.

"He didn't get a dime, a nickel, a penny . . . nothing!" defense attorney Aaron Goldstein shouted just feet from the jury box.

At one point during Goldstein's more than two-hour closing, Blagojevich's wife, Patti, began to sob on a courtroom bench.

Pacing the crowded courtroom and sometimes pounding his fist on a lectern, Goldstein echoed what Blagojevich said during seven days on the stand - that his conversations, captured on FBI wiretap recordings, were mere brainstorming.

"You heard a man thinking out loud, on and on and on," he said. "He likes to talk, and he does talk, and that's him. And that's all you heard."

Goldstein took issue with prosecutors' likening Blagojevich to a corrupt traffic cop demanding bribes to rip up speeding tickets.

"The hypothetical makes no sense," he said. A police officer can't ever ask for cash, but "a politician has a right to ask for campaign contributions."

Lead prosecutor Reid Schar told jurors in his rebuttal - the last word to jurors - that Blagojevich went way beyond talk: "He made decisions over and over, and took actions over and over."

Blagojevich, 54, is accused of trying to sell or trade President Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat and trying to shake down executives by threatening state decisions that would hurt their businesses.

Blagojevich did not take the stand in his first trial last year, which ended with a hung jury. That panel agreed on just a single count - that he lied to the FBI about how involved he was in fund-raising as governor.

For her part, prosecutor Carrie Hamilton tried to assume the role of professor and jurors' best friend - going through each charge and clicking on a computer mouse to display explanatory charts with bullet points and arrows.

Hamilton said that despite Blagojevich's denials, the evidence - including the FBI recordings - proved he used his power as governor to benefit himself.