Editorial: Would a retrial be worth it? Yes

Sam Adam Jr. was, predictably, in high dudgeon Tuesday after a federal jury deadlocked on 23 of the 24 charges against his client, former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

“Why are we spending $25 (million) to $30 million on a retrial when they couldn’t prove it the first time?” Adam bellowed at a post-verdict press conference. Federal prosecutors, he said, must weigh a retrial against one simple question: “Is this worth it?”

Simply put, Mr. Adam: Yes, it is.

If it costs each of Illinois’ 12.9 million residents a couple of bucks to get conclusive verdicts on the most serious charges against their former governor, a retrial will be the best use of taxpayer dollars this state has seen in some time.

Perhaps only in Illinois can a former governor’s conviction on a federal charge that carries a five-year prison sentence be considered a disappointing anticlimax. Yet that’s how it felt on Tuesday when the jury returned a verdict on only one of the 24 charges against Blagojevich, convicting him of lying to federal agents about keeping his campaign activities separate from his official duties as governor.

We don’t mean to belittle Blagojevich’s conviction. Blagojevich’s nonstop campaign machine was a defining trait of his time in office. We’ve often described him as delusional, and perhaps he also had deluded himself into believing in the fictional “firewall” about which he boasted to the FBI. There’s satisfaction in knowing that a jury of Blagojevich’s peers convicted him of being a liar.

Blagojevich scoffed at his conviction, calling the count a “nebulous charge” and echoing his attorneys in portraying federal prosecutors as money-wasting zealots.

“We have a prosecutor who has wasted and wanted to spend tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to take me away from my family and my home,” said a defiant Blagojevich.

We’ll agree with the governor on this much: The lying charge probably was the least serious of the counts he faced. That is exactly why we were encouraged when assistant U.S. attorney Reid Schar emphatically stated the government’s desire to retry Blagojevich and his brother, Robert Blagojevich, on the unresolved charges.

We believe the remaining charges against Blagojevich describe corruption and disregard for the duties of office so serious and so blatant that they must be addressed conclusively by a jury.

We do not believe there is room for indecision — whether it be for or against the defendants — in a case that combines both a disastrous chapter in Illinois political history and one of the most vigorous federal investigations in state government history.

Blagojevich and Sam Adam Jr. and Sr. all blasted the government for failing to prove its case. Yet within hours of the verdict, one juror told The Associated Press that a lone holdout prevented the jury from convicting Blagojevich on the charges related to the attempted selling of President Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

“They threw everything they could at me … and the jury agreed that the government did not prove its case,” Blagojevich had said after the verdict.

Sorry, governor, but it sounds to us like the jury didn’t agree on much of anything. And what they did agree on found you guilty.

To Blagojevich and his defense team, this all comes down to the money invested in the original prosecution and a retrial.

To us, it’s a matter of justice as defined by our legal system. We’ll gladly wait — and foot the bill — for as long as it takes to see justice done.

State Journal-Register of Springfield, Ill.