Shortly after a federal jury on Tuesday in Chicago found all four defendants in the highly publicized "ComEd 4" trial guilty of participating in a scheme to bribe former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, one of the jurors provided insight into the group's verdict.
"All of us agreed that lobbying is necessary for our legislators to be educated," juror Amanda Schnitker Sayers told reporters Tuesday. "This is not lobbying. The defense did very well, to try to prove that this was all normal course of business, did not sit well with us."
The verdict came after week of deliberations in the case, in which the defendants -- former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan confidant Michael McClain, former ComEd CEO Anne Pramaggiore, former ComEd lobbyist John Hooker and former ComEd consultant Jay Doherty -- were accused of seeking favors for Illinois' largest electric utility by arranging $1.3 million in contracts and payments for associates of a powerful state politician.
Pramaggiore and McClain were convicted of four counts of falsifying records, four counts of bribery of a public official and one count of conspiracy. Doherty and Hooker were convicted of one count of conspiracy, one count of bribery of a public official, and four counts of falsifying records.
Madigan is not in court and faces his own trial in April 2024, after being charged with racketeering in a separate indictment.
He was, however, a key part of the evidence presented throughout the trial.
"I don't want to speak for the whole jury about about Madigan," Schnitker Sayers said. "We tried not to discuss him as far as outside of this case. But his involvement with this case, of course, was key. And you know, our perception was that he really did cause this all to happen."
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Central to the trial was an allegation that ComEd paid $1.3 million to five Madigan allies through various intermediaries, including a consulting firm owned by Doherty. The recipients of that money allegedly did little or no work for it, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Diane MacArthur said the defendants knew it.
Assistant U.S. Atty. Amar Bhacu told jurors the defendants were careful not to disclose their alleged scheme.
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“We are not talking about amateurs here. We are not talking checkers; we are talking chess. When it came to chess, Mr. McClain and the others were grand masters at corruption,” he said.
The defendants say there was no criminal conspiracy, but they were building good will, just as any good lobbyist would have done.
Illinois Senate President Don Harmon said in response to the verdict that the "behavior brought to light and put on display at this trial was shockingly gluttonous and unhealthy to democracy."
"We’ve taken concrete steps to discourage bad behavior. But most importantly, I believe we have people committed to behaving better," Harmon said.
Meanwhile, House Republican Leader Tony McCombie called the trial “a costly seven week reminder of just what is wrong in state government."
"This guilty verdict has proven that the system of doing business in Springfield is broken," McCombie said. "This should not have been the first step to rooting out corruption in Illinois, but after today, it is clear there must be a sense of urgency in bringing back the people’s trust in state government.”
Schnitker Sayers says the jury's glimpse into how the state government is run was a "good service," and that it's something that her and her fellow jurors "will never forget."
"There are very clear ways that our government should be reviewing and approving legislation and also electing our officials," Schnitker Sayers said. "And we would really like the government to know that we as citizens, all want to see that done in a correct manner, without any shady business behind the scenes."
"This should be a landmark where we start to do better for ourselves, for our children and have pride in our city and our state and not make any shady dealings to get stuff done because we don't need to," Schnitker Sayers continued. "We're amazing people. We can all do amazing things. We don't need to do things a corrupt way to get things done in the proper fashion."
The group will learn their sentence at a later date, the judge announced Tuesday.
