A federal jury Monday convicted Rod Blagojevich of sweeping corruption, putting an end to a tragicomic legal and political drama that brought downIllinois' showy and would-be populist former governor.



In its 10th day of deliberations, the 11-woman, one-man jury convicted Blagojevich of several shakedown attempts, including allegations that he brazenly tried to sellPresidentBarack Obama's oldU.S. Senate seat in 2008. The decisive verdict came less than a year after the first jury to hear the case found him guilty of one criminal charge but deadlocked on the rest.



The new jury had no such reservations, finding Blagojevich guilty on 11 criminal counts related to the Senate seat and six counts involving fundraising shakedowns of a hospital executive and racetrack owner.



The verdict could lead to a lengthy prison term for Blagojevich, normally a hard-to-silence talking machine who defied legal convention after his arrest and kept a high media profile. But Monday, as he left court with his wife, Patti, Blagojevich was nearly tongue-tied.



"I, frankly, am stunned," said Blagojevich, who was barred after the verdict from traveling outside northernIllinois without court permission. "There's not much left to say other than we want to get home to our little girls and talk to them and explain things to them and try to sort things out."



The outcome of the retrial provides vindication forU.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who famously held a news conference after Blagojevich's 2008 arrest to say investigators had stopped a "political corruption crime spree" and that the misconduct would make Abraham Lincoln roll over in his grave.



"This is a bittersweet moment," said Fitzgerald, harking back to the 2006 federal conviction of Blagojevich's predecessor,George Ryan. "Five years ago, another jury sent another message that corruption in Illinois is not tolerable. Gov. Blagojevich did not get that message."



The implications of the verdict for Illinois' scandal-plagued political system are less clear. Blagojevich once fancied himself presidential material, but even before his December 2008 arrest, his popularity with voters had dropped to record low levels, and he found himself a pariah in his own Democratic Party. He was impeached and removed from office a couple of months after his arrest.



Coupled with the lone guilty count from last summer's trial, Blagojevich has now been convicted of 18 counts of wire fraud, bribery, attempted extortion, conspiracy and lying to theFBI.



The new jury voted to find Blagojevich not guilty of one bribery count involving an alleged fundraising shakedown of a road-building executive. The panel also deadlocked on two other counts, one also involving the road builder and the other concerning an alleged 2006 fundraising shakedown of then-U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, now Chicago's mayor.



In his first trial, Blagojevich declined to testify but changed tactics for the retrial and took the stand for seven days. One juror said she found Blagojevich "personable" and said his likability complicated deliberations, but another said the panel found the testimony "manipulative" and that the testimony didn't help him.



"I think our verdict shows we did not believe it," she said.



Blagojevich had little visible reaction in court as the first guilty count was read, but then he sat back in his chair with his lips pursed and glanced toward his wife after the first three counts were all guilty.



He eventually mouthed the words "I love you" toward his wife, who was in the first row crying and leaning on her brother. Moments after the jury left the room, Blagojevich embraced her and cradled her head, telling her it would be all right.



The trial exhibited multiple Blagojevich personalities, the manic and almost desperate-sounding schemer heard on wiretaps; the strident and outraged everyman fighting the system that came out in multiple media appearances following his arrest; and the humble, polite and modest presence on the witness stand before jurors.



Likewise, there was an oddly schizophrenic nature to the Blagojevich defense, both the one he waged in court and the one he waged with vocal and strident indignation in the media. Almost in the same breath, the Blagojevich narrative portrayed him as a paragon of ethics and a wheeling-dealing practitioner of politics as usual in a system he frequently decried as corrupt.



In its second incarnation, the prosecution case amounted to a significant re-engineering of the one presented by government lawyers last summer that largely ended in a hung jury. Jurors in that case later complained that wide-ranging racketeering allegations had been too complicated.



So prosecutors significantly streamlined the charges, dispensing with many of the claims that launched the criminal investigation of Blagojevich in the first place. Gone was any significant reference to Operation Board Games, a federal criminal probe that earlier snagged top Blagojevich fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko in a scheme to corrupt state regulatory panels.



The new strategy eliminated embarrassing testimony that painted Blagojevich as fickle, shallow and disengaged from his official duties, including claims that he hid in the bathroom to avoid his budget czar and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on clothing despite complaints of personal money woes.



"I thought the first trial was well-presented. I think the second trial was better presented because we learned from the first trial and made it simpler," Fitzgerald told reporters.



From the start, the case against Blagojevich had a heavy overlay of political intrigue, with the names of prominent national leaders drawn repeatedly into testimony and evidence. Chief among those was Obama, whose oldU.S. Senate seat was the focus of the marquee charges in the case. When Obama was elected president in November 2008, Blagojevich held the sole authority under Illinois law to name a successor, and prosecutors argued that he tried to leverage that power to cash in for himself.



Through intermediaries, Obama sent signals that he preferred the post go to his friend Valerie Jarrett, prompting Blagojevich to allegedly offer a swap — Jarrett to the Senate and Blagojevich to a Cabinet post or other high-level administration job. Another deal allegedly floated by Blagojevich would have had Obama insiders lean on wealthy financiers to bankroll a nonprofit advocacy group for the governor to run at a generous salary.



After all that was rebuffed and Jarrett withdrew from consideration, Blagojevich angled to hand the Senate post to U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. in exchange for $1.5 million in donations promised by Jackson supporters.



The jury also convicted him of trying to squeeze $25,000 in fundraising help out of Children's Memorial Hospital CEO Patrick Magoon as the price for an $8 million hike in state reimbursement rates for pediatric specialists. He was also found guilty of delaying approval of legislation to benefit the financially ailing horse-racing industry in an attempt to pry $100,000 in campaign cash from Maywood Park owner John Johnston.



In his testimony, Blagojevich denied shaking down Magoon or Johnston, insisting that his campaign organization's approach to the two was made because they had been donors in the past and were considered "low-hanging fruit."



Jurors were more receptive to Blagojevich's denials of involvement in two other alleged schemes. In one, prosecutors claimed he had dangled a multibillion-dollar tollway expansion to try to extract $500,000 in fundraising help from road builder Gerald Krozel. In the other, government lawyers claimed Blagojevich held up payment of a state grant to a Northwest Side school until Emanuel, who sought the money, pressed his Hollywood talent agent brother to throw a fundraiser for the governor.



But no amount of talk from Blagojevich on the stand could explain away all his incriminating attempts at deal-making over the Senate seat that was captured on government wiretaps. On one, for example, Blagojevich boasted of "tangible support" being offered by Jackson backers as payment for the seat and declaring his top priorities for settling on a Senate pick as "our legal situation. Our personal situation. My political situation."



In his testimony, Blagojevich insisted that the wiretaps merely recorded him thinking out loud about ideas he largely had no interest in pursuing. Floating Jackson's name, he said, was just a ruse to scare Democratic political insiders in Washington to get behind his ultimate play: an aboveboard political deal to name Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan senator in exchange for support in Springfield for his legislative agenda.



Jurors said they didn't put much stock in his alibi because Blagojevich did nothing to move it toward fruition.



In the end, prosecutors and leaders of theFBI in Chicago said they were sure Blagojevich's own words on scores of wiretaps had done him in. The FBI's Robert Grant borrowed a quote from a cartoonist to sum it up.



"Lady Justice is blind," Grant said, "but she has very sophisticated listening devices."



bsecter@tribune.com



jcoen@tribune.com