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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Ind. Courts - Still more on "7th Circuit Judges May Testify in Retrial Over Web Threats"

Updating this ILB entry from March 3rd, Mark Fass of the New York Law Journal reports today:

The second trial of blogger Harold "Hal" Turner, the New Jersey white supremacist charged with threatening to kill three Chicago federal judges, has resulted in a second mistrial.

At the end of their second full day of deliberations Wednesday, the jurors sent a note to the judge stating that another day of deliberations would be useless, the third time they reported they believed a unanimous verdict was impossible.

This time, Judge Donald Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, sitting by designation, let them go.

He tentatively scheduled the third trial to begin on April 12.

The mistrial constitutes a serious defeat for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois, which prosecuted the case in Brooklyn federal court.

Following the first mistrial in January, in which the threatened judges -- Judges Richard Posner, William Bauer and Frank Easterbrook of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals -- did not appear as witnesses, a juror told reporters the jury deadlocked due to a dearth of testimony.

"The prosecution's case was so weak," the juror said. "He just bailed out."

This time, all three judges flew to New York and took the witness stand, though somewhat begrudgingly. Posner complained from the stand that he would rather be working.

Now, Chicago's U.S. Attorney, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, will have to decide whether to try Turner for a third time, and if so whether to ask the judges to appear again.

Asked as he left the courtroom whether the government would again try the case, the lead prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Hogan said, "We're going to review it. I'd say it's highly likely."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 11, 2010 10:29 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts