Panel finally found common ground
They endured five months of grueling testimony, fought amongst themselves and watched two fellow members get booted for concealing their run-ins with the law. In the end, though, the George Ryan jury found common ground on a mountain of evidence -- even as new questions arose about a juror's past.
Jurors on Monday pointed to multiple pieces of evidence that persuaded them to convict Ryan -- from a 1994 memo by Ryan's chief of staff to the former governor's habit of taking cash reimbursements for trips to Jamaica.
"There was a whole lot of stuff out there. You could pretty much take your pick," said juror James Cwick, 22, of Glen Ellyn. He pointed to "tax issues and hiding taxes, diverting some of his campaign funds to his family members [and] stopping investigations" as areas where the evidence damaged Ryan.
The jurors started deliberating March 13. Their sessions soon appeared torn by dissension, prompting U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to instruct them to treat each other "with dignity and respect." Then, on March 27, revelations that two members did not disclose their arrest records on juror questionnaires prompted Pallmeyer to dismiss them and replace them with two alternates.
Jury foreman Sonja Chambers -- praised by other jurors for keeping deliberations on track -- said the panel took its time and carefully weighed all the evidence. "We came to do a job, and we did that job," said Chambers, 38, of Bolingbrook.
Chambers could become an issue in Ryan's appeal. On Monday morning, lawyers for both sides met in Pallmeyer's office to discuss whether she, too, had withheld information on her questionnaire. Pallmeyer opted to let the trial proceed over defense objections.
Chambers was involved in a domestic relations lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court, records show. The juror questionnaire asked Chambers if she or immediate family members had been parties to a lawsuit or had been arrested. She did not disclose the lawsuit.
Chambers could not be reached for comment on the matter. Defense lawyers said Ryan's appeal might also raise objections to other jurors' undisclosed legal histories. Lawyers plan to argue Pallmeyer had a shifting standard about when to dismiss jurors.
Because of the problems with juror criminal histories, the U.S. Attorney's office is discussing a policy that would call for background checks of jurors in criminal cases, an office spokesman said.
Those who survived on the panel made it clear they were swayed more by testimony of lower-level employees in the secretary of state's office than by high-profile witnesses like former Ryan chief of staff Scott Fawell and television actor Mike Farrell, a Ryan character witness.
But juror Kevin Rein, a 48-year-old carpenter from Glen Ellyn, and Cwick both cited a Fawell memo urging Ryan to get rid of inspectors looking into fund-raising in Ryan's office as key evidence. During closing arguments, prosecutor Patrick Collins called the memo the "magna carta" of corruption under Ryan.
The length of jury service clearly took a toll on some jurors, who were pulled from their jobs and families four days a week to work on the case. Jill DiMartino, 55, said the experience was "kind of rough" because her mother had to be admitted to the hospital during the trial.
Rein depicted the apparent hostility during early deliberations as part of "normal" give-and-take between jurors. "It wasn't anything personal. Things happen. People apologize. Things get heated."
Even after the alternates joined the jury, "we still argued," Rein said. "That's why we asked for certain transcripts. It was important enough to argue about."
The dismissal of Evelyn Ezell and Robert Pavlick gave the tension-wracked jury a chance to start over. When alternates DiMartino and Charles Svymbersky, 42, joined the panel on March 28, Chambers and the other jurors let them run the proceedings until they got caught up.
The holdover jurors started afresh on those counts they had already dealt with.
"We had the floor," DiMartino said. "When we were going to start a count, I said, 'Let's look over our notes, because we've been away for a couple of weeks.' "
The surviving jurors did not tell the alternates about the result of their deliberations to that point, DiMartino said.
Two highly charged issues linked to Ryan -- an accident that killed the six Willis children, which some blamed on his office, and his decision to stop executions in Illinois -- played no role in the jury's decision, jurors said.
Through jury selection it seemed that "there was going to be basically two elephants in the room . . . the Willis family and the death penalty," Rein said. "Nobody in any way, shape, or form brought up the Willis family in deliberations."
Contributing: Maureen O'Donnell, Frank Main, Dan Rozek and Cathleen Falsani