Through the eyes of a juror: The Rezko deliberations

In the jury room, Randall Franz and his fellow jurors argued over every count they considered during their deliberations.

But Franz said the first day of deliberations was probably the most contentious.

An initial poll of jurors indicated they were almost evenly split on whether Rezko was guilty of the charges against him. The 30-year-old Franz, a postal carrier, remembers the initial vote being either deadlocked at 6-6, or perhaps leaning towards guilty by a 7-5 margin.

"That first day, there was a lot of dissension," he said in a Wednesday night interview in his duplex in Montgomery, just south of Aurora. "Some people sitting through the trial saw one thing, some saw something else."

He leaned towards guilty from the first day.

"I took everything that was presented to me and made my verdict on each individual count," he said.

Jurors worked through their split by reviewing evidence as it pertained to different companies that allegedly were involved in transactions with Rezko and other key players.

Then, they reviewed the criminal counts linked to those transactions to help determine whether Rezko was guilty or innocent of that offense.

Jurors argued and debated over Count 13 -- the last one on which they reached a verdict -- for "several days" trying to determine if Rezko's actions met the specific wording in the jury instructions.

Ultimately, jurors found him guilty of that offense.

Rezko was acquitted on counts where jurors couldn't directly tie him to illegal actions or transactions, Franz said.

Key prosecution witness Stuart Levine was viewed warily, because his memory of specific dates and conversations wasn't clear, Franz said.

But his testimony carried much more weight if it was backed by other information, specifically transcripts of phone conversations or other evidence, Franz said.

"He has credibility when there is concrete information to back it up," Franz said. "Levine was only credible when we had evidence to back up what he was saying."

Despite the tension and sometimes intense debates, jurors remained civil.

"We never got to the point where people were shouting," he said, adding: "People would voice their opinion with some emotion behind it."

Jurors never discussed Gov. Blagojevich or his alleged ties to Rezko during deliberations, Franz said.

"Gov. Blagojevich, his name never came up in the jury deliberation room," Franz said.

He said the evidence he saw in the case didn't clearly link Blagojevich to Rezko's wrongdoing.

"I wasn't presented any evidence that showed the governor knew," Franz said. "Chances are he did, but I wasn't shown anything that the governor knew what was going on."

He said jurors weren't shown evidence that would support an indictment of the governor.

"It'd be a damn thin case. Based on the evidence I've seen in the last three months, no, I don't think he'll be indicted," Franz said of Blagojevich.

But he questioned Rezko's close ties to Blagojevich.

"Rezko was dirty and he was in Blagojevich's kitchen cabinet," he said.

He said the trial provided "eye-opening" glimpses of the way state politics works in Illinois.

"To be appointed to a board, you have to know somebody close to the administration," he said, adding: "no matter whose administration it is."

He said he didn't follow state government closely, in fact, he doesn't vote in state elections -- just national ones.

Barack Obama's name was never mentioned by jurors -- "not at all in the deliberation room," he said. Rezko was once an Obama fund-raiser.

He questioned Rezko's defense strategy, saying the standard practice by his attorneys seemed to be "discredit each witness because their memory was bad."

He also wondered why defense attorneys didn't "attack the facts in the case."

But he insisted jurors followed instructions and didn't hold it against Rezko that his attorneys called no witnesses of their own.