EXTRA: Well, that didn't take long

A U.S. Court of Appeals panel based in Chicago officially upheld the 14-year prison sentence that former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is serving. This ruling comes merely three days after attorneys for Blagojevich argued that the trial judge didn't take into account all the letters written by prison inmates who have encountered the former governor and say he has been a model inmate.

ZAGEL: His Blagojevich ruling upheld (again)

It's not the least bit surprising the appeals court would take such an attitude -- not wanting to overturn U.S. District Judge James Zagel unless he did something that was a blatant legal screw-up.

BUT THIS WAS a quick ruling. The argument was made Tuesday, and the written legal brief rejecting Milorod came out Friday morning. Not even the appearance of any real deliberation. It reminds me of when the Illinois Supreme Court considered the case of "Baby Richard," a child whose adoption was challenged by his father even though the mother willingly gave the boy up. It took that court four hours to come back with a ruling in the father's favor.

Blagojevich's attorneys can now take their case to the Supreme Court of the United States, although I can't envision that in this Age of Trump they'd be terribly sympathetic. The only real question is, 'How quickly will they refuse to even hear arguments?'

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How will the Blagojevich tale end?

It will be interesting to see just how seriously the federal appeals court based in Chicago takes the latest argument made by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – who desperately wants that 14-year prison sentence he’s serving changed to something he considers more reasonable.
 

BLAGOJEVICH: 7 more years?

Perhaps something like time served?

ATTORNEYS FOR BLAGOJEVICH were at the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, spending about a half-hour arguing why U.S. District Judge James Zagel was wrong when he re-sentenced the former governor to the same prison term that he had originally received when found guilty of various crimes.

Admittedly, the court that found some of the charges he was found guilty of to be improper, but also said that those charges were lesser enough that they didn’t automatically ensure a lesser prison sentence.

That caused Zagel to hand down the same sentence, despite the many letters and statements that Blagojevich’s attorneys had presented to make an argument that the former governor is actually a model inmate at the federal corrections facility in Colorado where he has been held since 2012.

Zagel at the time made a point of saying he disregarded what those people thought about Blagojevich’s conduct while in prison because they did not know him back when he was Illinois’ governor and held a position of power that required people to trust his judgment and conduct.

BLAGOJEVICH’S ATTORNEYS ARGUED on Tuesday that Zagel ought to be required to take those people (many of whom are inmates who have had contact with Blagojevich during his incarceration) and their thoughts into account.

“Judge Zagel dismissed it in effect as being irrelevant,” attorney Michael Nash argued before the appeals court. “It is an important factor that should have been considered. The judge dismissed it out of hand.”

I’m not sure how eager the appeals court will be to decide on what amounts to a judgment call on the part of the trial judge.

ZAGEL: Judging the judge's ruling

Because part of what his job includes is to decide what information that comes up during a trial is relevant, and what is not. In some cases, it is his task to keep lesser details from being blown out of proportion, and irrelevant facts from swaying a verdict one way or the other.

I CAN APPRECIATE why attorneys for Blagojevich are eager to have people say nice things about the man; particularly since here in the outside world – and particularly in that political universe known as Chicagoland – the only talk we hear about the man is negative.

Creating the image of a man who no longer poses a threat to our society, or our political structure, is key to making an argument that the five years Blagojevich already has served in prison is sufficient.

Which, if you want to be totally honest, is more time than most people who get politically-connected criminal convictions wind up getting.

If it were just about anybody else, particularly someone with a less-bloated ego than our former governor had, he’d have got the 18 months at a minimum-security facility and he’d be well on his way to turning into a “Whatever became of …” story.

INSTEAD, BLAGOJEVICH SEEMS determined to live on in our mindset at least until that May 2024 date on which he qualifies for early release – provided he really remains as well-behaved an inmate as his attorneys contend he is.

That means several more appearances in coming years by former first lady Patti trying to claim that her man deserves to be free – does she think she’s becoming Winnie Mandela, who spent those decades her activist husband Nelson was in jail traveling the world to argue for his cause?

PATTI: Speaking out for husband

Calling him an “eternal optimist,” Patti Blagojevich on Tuesday told reporter-types of her husband, “he’s always hoping this is going to come out the way it needs to come out.”

The sad thing is I could see where if THAT outcome were to become reality, it would be the nightmare for many of us in society who wish it were possible that we could just quit paying attention to the Illinois political nonsense of those year that is only topped by the state fiscal stupidity of the current era.

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What you think of Blagojevich situation says more about you than him

One-time Illinois first lady Patti Blagojevich may be “dumbfounded” and “flabbergasted” at the federal court judge who on Tuesday refused to reduce the prison sentence her husband, Rod, is serving.

 

BLAGOJEVICH: Could hair dye restore that mane?

But I can’t help but think that there were many people out amongst the masses who cheered quite loudly when they learned during the lunch hour that U.S. District Judge James Zagel re-imposed the same 14-year prison term that he originally gave to the former Illinois governor.

A FEDERAL APPEALS court in Chicago may have decided last year that five of the 14 counts that Rod Blagojevich was found guilty of were improper and tossed them out.

But that still left Blagojevich guilty of nine criminal counts and prosecuting attorneys at the federal courthouse in Chicago were determined to believe that those counts were the most severe and still amounted to acts worthy of a lengthy prison sentence – and not just the usual 18-month stint at the federal correctional center in Oxford, Wis., that often jokingly is referred to as an “Oxford education.”

It may be that only Patti Blagojevich and the couples’ daughters, Amy and Annie, thought there was a serious chance that Zagel would impose a new prison sentence that would result in significantly-less time having to be served at that correctional center in Colorado, or anywhere else.

Most people were getting worked up at the prospect that the overall sentence would be reduced significantly from the 14-year term to about five or six years – which if it had happened would have basically made his time already served sufficient.

WE COULD HAVE had our former governor back in our midst some time by year’s end.

But Zagel likely made himself popular with the public when he made his own comments – the ones about how he wasn’t swayed by the good behavior of Blagojevich while in prison.

“Those people, Zagel said, “knew him from inside the prison. They don’t know him” like we do in the outside world.

And there most definitely are those in our society vengeful or petty enough to want maximum suffering to take place in this instance. Blagojevich’s case brings out a gut emotion in many of us that goes far beyond the facts of the case.

PARTICULARLY FOR THOSE people who want to believe that just about anything political has a touch of criminality involved, and fantasize for the day that Hillary Clinton, her husband Bill and Barack Obama wind up serving prison time.

And probably think that the time served by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan (just over six years) was also a worthy point to let Republican politicos know what can happen to them if they stray from the conservative ideological line.

So in the end, it didn’t matter much that Patti Blagojevich publicly pleaded for mercy, asking that her husband be set free so that he could at least be a father to the couples’ younger daughter (the elder one is off attending college).

It probably also didn’t matter much that Blagojevich himself was contrite and apologetic and said all the things that legal officials usually want to hear about an inmate feeling contrite and apologetic.

BLAGOJEVICH TOLD US he realized the suffering of his wife and daughters in recent years is his fault, and how much of his past political ambition was improper. “I had a lot of ambition before. I learned that some of that is overrated.”

A comment to which I’m sure some amongst us scoffed and sneered before we go back to thinking of the roughly eight years of time that Blagojevich will still owe to the Bureau of Prisons.

In fact, there may be one significant detail that came out of Tuesday’s hearing at the Dirksen Federal Building – the image of Blagojevich broadcast over closed-circuit television from his prison in Colorado most definitely showed that Rod’s hair has, indeed, gone grey. Which, if he had been free and continuing in politics all these years likely would have happened anyway.

Just look at Obama these days – although he can claim it as being from the stress of having Congressional Republicans thwart his every governmental desire, rather than a fear of being caught in a prison yard brawl!

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Blagojevich took his time to tell us the same ol’ tale – I’m innocent!

I understand the concept of using every bit of time available to ensure that something is of the highest quality possible.

BLAGOJEVICH: I didn't do it!

And when the potential outcome is regaining one’s freedom, I also comprehend that the stakes for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich with his latest criminal appeal are all important.

BUT I HAVE to confess. When I learned that Blagojevich’s attorneys were pushing the 12:01 a.m. Tuesday deadline before filing (and wound up filing the documents with about one hour to spare), I was hopeful that we’d get some new piece of information.

Something of significance that would actually have the potential to convince people that the conviction and 14-year prison sentence received by Blagojevich was seriously flawed.

Something that would enlighten us observers into having a better comprehension of this particular criminal case.

But it didn’t happen.

INSTEAD, WHAT WE got was something that bears a strong resemblance to so many other criminal appeals I have read throughout the quarter-century that I have been a reporter-type person.

Incompetence, combined with negligence, all meant to keep “the truth” from coming out and making us realize that Milorod didn’t do it!

Specifically, the 91-page appeal contends that U.S. District Judge James Zagel was too eager to favor the prosecution.



ZAGEL: Did he blow it?

The appeal continues to harp on all those tape recordings that Blagojevich thinks would have made him appear to be an innocent in the eyes of a jury. His appeal contends that the judge deliberately excluded the bulk of those 33 recordings – while permitting the use of 70 recordings by prosecutors that made Blagojevich look bad.

PERSONALLY, I’M INTRIGUED at the other issue Blagojevich’s attorneys brought up – claiming it is a flaw that Zagel did not provide jurors with a specific definition about how “campaign contributions” and “bribes” are different when it comes to “political deal-making.”

I suspect that there are people who would have interpreted any such definition as political double-talk, and might well have taken it as a negative that they were supposed to even consider such a distinction.

Although when one thinks about it, what is the difference between the two concepts?

Because one can argue that a campaign contribution is bribe-like in that it is money meant to gain some personal attention to oneself. Except that in a bribe, the promise of a “payback” is much more explicit. Sometimes, very specific.

WHEREAS WITH A contribution, it is more vague, and in theory may never be made. You could be giving your money to a political candidate and get nothing to show for it – except the knowledge that for a few seconds, the candidate thought of you as he cashed your check.

My point being that this issue may be so vague that it would be confusing to try to overly define these concepts. It may even offend some that they’re expected to acknowledge a difference.

I’m not convinced that any of this is going to sway anyone. I’m not convinced that the outcome will change one bit as a result of this appeal.

Largely because the arguments made in the appeal are the same ones we have heard all through the Blagojevich saga. If this is what the appeal was going to amount to, why couldn’t it have been filed long ago?

AS MUCH AS I think the length of Blagojevich’s prison term is too much (and yes, one possible outcome of this appeal is that the conviction is upheld but the sentence is reduced), I’m not sure if any Court of Appeals judges will be swayed.

Although in the end, it doesn’t matter what I (or any other would-be pundit) think. It’s just those few judges who will determine whether or not Zagel screwed up seriously-enough to warrant a chance in the Blagojevich verdict.

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Blagojevich to leave us after Wednesday

Today is likely THE day.

U.S. District Judge James Zagel has said he will use Wednesday to actually impose a sentence against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich for the twenty-something counts upon which he was found guilty in two different trials.

WHICH MEANS Wednesday is “the end” for Blagojevich as a public figure. While I doubt they would immediately take him into custody, it is likely that Milorod will be given a few weeks to try to get his affairs in order – before then being given a chance to surrender himself at whichever federal correctional center he gets assigned to.

We make jokes about Blagojevich and former Gov. George Ryan being cellmates at the work camp near Terre Haute, Ind. But let’s not forget that Ryan got assigned to the location near a maximum-security prison because of his age and health.

Which means Blagojevich could easily wind up a recipient of an “Oxford education” at the correctional center near Oxford, Wis.

Not that it matters much. Incarceration is incarceration, regardless of which facility he gets assigned to. It will be a burden on his wife, Patti, and two daughters.

WHICH SOME PEOPLE will perceive as some sort of cheap shot on my part by trying to bring up family compassion into the equation.

I already have heard countless political and legal pundits say that the family issue means nothing on Wednesday.

I won’t be able to be at the courtroom on Wednesday. Although it wouldn’t really matter much, because I don’t believe anyone will be able to appreciate what goes through the mind of a man in that circumstance.

When all that his life amounted to has collapsed, and a judge imposes what may seem like a random number – of years that must be served before one can dream of having their freedom again.

PERSONALLY, I FOUND it humorous that Blagojevich had his Chicago Cubs fandom in mind on Tuesday. The Chicago Tribune reported that someone asked the former governor about Ron Santo’s acceptance into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Then again, if I were in that situation, I’d probably be trying to think of anything except for the situation in front of me.

Maybe Blagojevich will pass his days away in coming months replaying in his head old Cubs games and watching some of those 342 home runs sailing over the ivy-covered brick walls of Wrigley Field.

But back to Wednesday.

I’M CURIOUS TO see (even though I won’t actually be in the courtroom) how emotional Zagel becomes in actually imposing the sentence. I’m hoping he doesn’t relish the moment too much.

Because there will be more than enough people eager to see the moment and shout with joy. For all I know, it may create more excitement than Santo’s Hall of Fame election did on Monday.

As it was, I noticed that on Tuesday Zagel made a point of saying that the “30-years to life” range for a prison term was correct, while also adding that it, “simply (was) not appropriate in the context of this case.”

It certainly isn’t.

BUT IT ALSO gives me the sense that Zagel thinks the 15/20-year range is being compassionate. So when Blagojevich attorneys say they think four years ought to be a “maximum” penalty, and that perhaps something significantly less would be appropriate, there will be more than enough snickers to go around.

I’ve written before that I believe 3 years for a prison sentence somehow seems right, although it would seem I’m in the minority on this issue.

It’s just that I can’t get around the fact that Blagojevich’s “profit” from his actions that a jury found to be “criminal” was so minimal – and makes me believe that a part of the hostility that will be expressed Wednesday as joy upon the former governor’s sentencing is nothing more than political partisanship run amok.

Because I honestly believe that is what is behind a significant part of the Blagojevich hostility. Some people are enjoying themselves way too much at his expense for this to be emotionally healthy.

YES, IT’S TRUE. A part of me isn’t going to be pleased with the outcome on Wednesday – even though as I write this, I don’t know what it will be (I’ll predict “14 years” will be the actual sentence – eight years longer than what Ryan ultimately received).

Fourteen years in prison just because someone was offended that you got elected in the first place seems a bit harsh. Even if a judge thinks he’s being “compassionate” by imposing that, instead of 20.

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No legal surprises from Zagel. Is that what Cellini, Blagojevich counting on?

U.S. District Judge James Zagel issued two rulings in recent days that favored prosecutors in government corruption cases involving William Cellini and Rod Blagojevich.

ZAGEL: No legal surprises?

Yet somehow, I don’t think either politically high-powered defendant is all that surprised, or upset, at the unfavorable rulings to their motions.

BOTH MEN WERE trying to get Zagel to rule on motions that would have benefitted them – and “da judge” refused.

In the case of Cellini, the fundraiser who tells politicians what they should do with their positions of authority, his attorneys wanted a ruling that would have struck down his “guilty” verdicts on the grounds that one of the jurors was tainted.

The “taint” coming from the fact that the juror didn’t admit upfront that she had a prior criminal record.

Whereas Blagojevich was once again trying to get excepts from the tape recordings made by the G-man wiretaps – ones that prosecutors didn’t use in their trial against the former governor but that he claims would put him in a favorable light.

ZAGEL WASN’T “BUYING it” in either case.

For Cellini, he ruled that defense attorneys are going to have to prove that the so-called tainted juror had some bias against their client. The fact that not all information came out prior to trial isn’t enough to warrant tossing out a criminal verdict.

For Blagojevich, Zagel said that defense attorneys should have tried to bring this issue up a long time ago – rather than thinking it could be used to ambush a sentencing hearing. One could argue that Blagojevich HAS been trying to get these tapes in the public realm for so long, and that Zagel has been the one who has stood in the way.

So now, we have sentencing hearings coming up – ones in which both men are looking at the possibility of a decade or more of prison time as their punishment for their improper acts that cheated the public out of the service they should have a right to expect from their government officials.

WHICH IS A statement that lays it on a little thick. But then again, that is the way many prosecutors (particularly at the federal level) tend to think. We may well get some variation of that line when it comes time to sentence the two men.

I don’t believe either man expected Zagel to rule in their favor. In fact, I think it would have screwed up their long-term strategy if the judge HAD given them what they were asking for.

What I suspect all of this was about was getting the judge to rule negatively, so that the attorneys can argue on appeal that THIS is the critical error made by Zagel – and one that would warrant having their convictions tossed out and new trials being held.

Albeit under conditions where prosecutors were restrained in ways that they were not during their most recent trials.

THE LEGAL ARGUMENTS made for Cellini against the juror and for Blagojevich in favor of the tapes are more intended for that eventual appeals court panel that will hear these cases sometime during the next couple of years.

I’m sure the attorneys for both men are envisioning the day when a legal panel will issue a ruling (perhaps 2-1) that is more to their liking, and one that would allow both of these men to go through the rest of their lives contending that they were the “victims” of an overbearing prosecution in these legal matters.

Then again, it’s always possible that the 2-1 vote will go against them, with the “1” being the lone judge who thinks their argument has any credibility.

That is, after all, what became of the appeals filed on behalf of former Gov. George Ryan. At every level of the appeals process, there were judges who thought there was merit to the arguments he made in his own defense.

UNFORTUNATELY FOR HIM, Ryan could never get a majority – which is why he looks at the possibility of another 20 months  at the work camp located near the maximum-security Terre Haute Correctional Center in Indiana.

And the real issue at stake these days with regards to either of these government corruption cases is whether the arguments being made now to a judge who most likely just wants to put an end to these legal proceedings will be viewed more favorably by fresh ears in the future?

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Blagojevich becoming oh so predictable

The sad part of the predicament facing former Gov. Rod Blagojevich is that it has become so predictable.

BLAGOJEVICH: Being picked on?



Attorneys for Blagojevich filed motions late Monday that seek a new trial – even though he has yet to be sentenced for the 18 charges (don’t forget the one conviction from his first trial) upon which he has been found “guilty.”

HIS PROFOUND ARGUMENT for thinking he’s entitled to another “do over” in court? It basically comes down to the level of, “the judge is picking on me.” My eight-year-old nieces make more convincing arguments.

Which is not a legal argument that I think U.S. District Judge James Zagel will take the least bit seriously. We all fully expect he will reject this line of thought and will proceed with sentencing – giving Blagojevich some time in prison where he likely will have to spend time while his real legal appeal takes place.

By that, I mean the appeals that ultimately go to the Court of Appeals circuit based in Chicago, then up to the Supreme Court of the United States (if that high court is willing to take on the case).

That ultimately is where Blagojevich’s fate will be resolved, and where any argument about whether the flaws committed during the trial are so profound that they warrant either a new sentencing – or an outright new trial.

THE ONLY SIGNIFICANCE to this first appeal is that it gives us the idea of what direction Blagojevich’s later legal appeals will take. Which means this is going to be purely a personality conflict.

It is going to claim that Zagel was so determined to have a trial that ended in significant verdicts of “guilty” that he went too far in his pre-trial rulings; hemming in the defense with so many restrictions that they were never able to get at the “truth.”

Only the version of the “truth” that prosecutors desired – which is the equivalent of the defendant admitting he’s a piece of political pond scum who seriously deserves the full 300 years that Blagojevich theoretically could get, and where anything less of a sentence would be an overgenerous show of compassion.

Yes, I personally do believe that the whole Blagojevich legal saga has become something taking on elements of a witch hunt, in which the public mood of those people who can’t stand Milorod is swaying the process to the point where there never was a chance that he could be acquitted of anything.

IF HE HAD been, we’d have a societal mood that would proclaim Blagojevich and Casey Anthony to be the perfect couple – to have to go into hiding and take on aliases in our society to ensure their very survival.

But I don’t think any Blagojevich appeal that focuses so intently on “the judge is picking on me” as its basis is going to succeed.

Zagel will reject it, and I am skeptical that the justices on the eventual three-member appeals panel that will hear his case will be inclined to trash one of their judicial colleagues – particularly not on behalf of Rod Blagojevich.

And I could easily see the Supreme Court of the United States seeing this appeal as a personality squabble, instead of some case involving great legal issues that must be resolved for our nation to continue to survive as we know it.

BECAUSE WHAT THIS appeal consists of as its “great legal issue” (heavy sarcasm intended) is that Zagel ruled too often in favor of prosecutors. That shows his bias.

By that standard, just about any criminal defendant could argue that their respective conviction is flawed. Because the judges are a part of the process. It is all too common that the types of people who want to get into enforcing and interpreting the law are going to do so in a manner meant to uphold the status quo.

ZAGEL: Doubtful he'll rule he unfair to Blagojevich



The true revolutionaries who want to overturn it are going to work a few steps outside of the process.

Then, there are the silly types like Blagojevich – who even in his earliest political days as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from the Ravenswood and Lincoln Square neighborhoods showed traces of trivial thought in the way he approached public policy and politics.

PERHAPS IT IS only natural that their legal motions are going to reek of the same sense of triviality. It’s just a shame that it means that once we work our way through the process in which prosecutors have to file written responses to Blagojevich’s claims before Zagel can officially rule on/reject it, the outcome will truly be that predictable.

And it will be some time before the name “Blagojevich” becomes a forgettable footnote to our political scene.

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This version of Blagojevich – the Trial seems so repetitive. Will it end soon?

BLAGOJEVICH: The sequel speeds along

I haven’t paid daily attention to the courthouse ramblings of recent weeks that comprise the U.S. government’s criminal case against former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. So I can’t tell you just how buried in legal dog-doo he truly is.

In fact, every time I have tried to hone in on what happened in court on any given day, it seems like it is the same story every day.

ATTORNEYS FOR BLAGOJEVICH were thwarted yet again by U.S. District Judge James Zagel in their attempt to question witnesses for the federal government, or were somehow prevented from bringing up points that might make their client look somewhat favorable.

The image that sticks in my mind thus far about this trial is the sight of our former first lady, Patti Blagojevich, on the verge of tears after a particularly harsh day of Zagel-imposed restrictions in court.

“A deliberate attempt to hide the truth,” was how Patti popped off that particular day while trying to control her rage.

Now I don’t doubt she was sincere in feeling that way. In fact, such a complaint is heard all too often in courthouses – regardless of what the case is.

JUST THE OTHER day, I was at a courthouse where I listened to the uncle of a man found guilty and awaiting sentencing tell me how “the truth didn’t come out” during his nephew’s trial.

It all comes down to how narrow a view of any story a judge decides he wants a jury exposed to. Because in restricting information from being expressed in courtrooms, a judge is supposed to be ensuring that they are not given information that would confuse them.

The criminal case itself is usually confusing enough. Why let irrelevant points get involved?

The problem becomes if a judge decides to get so heavy-handed that he limits information too much. Which is the point that Blagojevich’s attorneys want to make now, and likely will argue in the very possible scenario by which they have to appeal a Milorod conviction to a Court of Appeals.

SO IN THE same way that I don’t know the blow-by-blow details of what happened to Blagojevich in court, I can’t say definitively if Zagel is going “over the top” in his attempt to restrict irrelevant testimony OR if Blagojevich’s  attorneys REALLY ARE going way too far in their attempts to put on a defense-before-the-defense and need to have Zagel use the legal equivalent of a sledge hammer to keep things in order.

The one thing I do know is that Zagel is fortunate in that Blagojevich’s general image among political people is fairly low. Very few people are going to be offended by the thought of Milorod getting smacked about.

Even if you could get them to agree that Blagojevich should have been allowed to make some of his points, they probably think he deserves to be cheated.

Which is a shame. Because the whole point of our legal system is that even the incredibly scummy are entitled to the right to defend themselves in full.

THIS PORTION OF the trial is now at an end. Prosecutors finished putting on their case against Blagojevich on Thursday – following three weeks worth of testimony. Which is much quicker than the nearly two months of testimony that took place during the former governor’s first criminal trial – the one that resulted in one lone “guilty” verdict on a minor criminal charge.

Prosecutors seem to think that by paring down their legal arguments, they will make it easier for a jury to decide to vote to convict on the 20 criminal charges Blagojevich now faces.

As opposed to what seems to be the usual legal strategy by which prosecutors throw out so much technical evidence that a jury votes to convict out of the belief that the accused must have done something wrong.

So now, the emphasis of Blagojevich, the Sequel will be on Blagojevich himself. Although there will be some hearings on Friday, the former governor’s attorneys are expected to begin their “defense” when the trial resumes on Monday.

UNLIKE THE FIRST trial, observers seem to think that Blagojevich will have to put up something resembling a defense. Perhaps he even will take the witness stand on his own behalf.

Zagel has repeatedly said that for defense attorneys to make the legal points they tried to do during the prosecution’s case, they need to do it during their portion of the trial.

So are we now going to get the sight in coming days of attorneys meticulously knocking down the prosecution’s case? Point-by-point, will it all come tumbling down?

Or is it very possible that the next few days are going to be filled with objection after objection from the prosecution – doing their best to thwart people from being able to testify in any way that resembles support for Rod Blagojevich.

THIS COMMENTARY SHOULDN’T come across as too much of a bashing of prosecutors. I fully comprehend that they’re in this to make their case and try to win. They’re going to be aggressive, believing that they’re serving the public interest.

It’s just that I fully realize this “issue” of improperly restricting Blagojevich’s defense is one that we’re going to re-hash for years to come. We’re watching right now the activities that will be the basis of the legal appeals-to-come.

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Did Blagojevich get a perception break?

A part of me wonders if Rod Blagojevich should feel blessed today, what with a federal judge deciding that the trial on corruption-related charges of a one-time city government official will take place this summer.

U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman ruled Tuesday that the new trial for Al Sanchez, the one-time Streets and Sanitation commissioner, will begin in July – the Tuesday after Independence Day, to be exact.

SANCHEZ IS THE one-time head of the Hispanic Democratic Organization whom federal prosecutors claim was using his city government post to be able to give city jobs to those members of his Daley-supporting Latino organization who were particularly good at their campaign work.

As it turns out, Sanchez already has been found guilty once of federal charges and faced prison time, only to have his conviction overturned on the grounds that federal prosecutors were not completely honest about the criminal arrest records of some of their key witnesses.

That means Sanchez and aide Aaron del Valle will have to go on trial again. Gettleman is eager to get the process going, so he chose the July 6 date to start the process, which makes it likely that some time around August and early September we political observers are going to have to once again relive the tales of corruption and political hiring emanating from City Hall.

But let’s not forget that in a courtroom just eight floors higher in the Dirksen Federal Building, U.S. District Judge James Zagel is going to be presiding over the trial of Blagojevich, which has its own tentative start date in June.

THAT IS LIKELY to be a complex jury selection process (I seem to recall it took nearly two months to pick a jury to preside over the trial of former Gov. George Ryan) that will take time. I won’t be surprised if that case doesn’t start getting into some serious testimony until about August or early September.

As I see it, Rod Blagojevich is not going to be the only corrupt politico (or should I say alleged corrupt politico?) on trial. For those people who like to watch the activity coming from the federal courts for northern Illinois, there are going to be dueling trials.

Blagojevich’s case is going to have to compete with Sanchez for public attention. It has me wondering how the news judgment is going to be made on days when both cases literally go head-to-head (and reporter-type people are having to use the stairs to go up and down from the 17th to the 25th floor on days when the elevators are on the fritz).

Personally, I’d lean toward the Blagojevich trial only because we’ve already been through the Sanchez trial. But if things start picking up momentum in Sanchez’ favor, then it could wind up becoming the bigger deal since Sanchez’ conviction was a significant part of what is considered to be one of the biggest scams out of City Hall during the past decade.

IF SANCHEZ WINDS up getting acquitted, that could be a bigger deal than anything happening to Milorod – unless Blagojevich himself gets acquitted, in which case we will have mobs of angry people descending upon the Ravenswood neighborhood to express their disgust at the man they want in prison regardless of the truth.

But I also understand the reality of many local residents when it comes to politics. Anything happening out of City Hall is of much greater significance than something happening in, or related to, Springfield.

A city official allied with Mayor Richard M. Daley who gets caught doing something bad is going to be considered more important than any goofball governor – even if his wife literally does eat bugs on national television.

Sanchez literally could steal the local thunder from Blagojevich when it comes to criminal corruption trials for the year 2010, particularly since both men claim they’re not guilty and that they intend to fight their cases through the legal procedure.

I DOUBT EITHER one of these guys would seriously consider a plea bargain. They both believe in themselves way too much.

Now I know there are political people of the Republican persuasion who are counting on Milorod being in the news on a regular basis this summer so as to bolster their rhetoric – which will consist of little more than screaming the name “Blagojevich!” and claiming that Democrats are all associated with him.

That will happen despite the reality that Democrats in Springfield didn’t get along with the now-former governor and were more eager than Republicans to get rid of him back during the Legislature’s impeachment and trial proceedings early last year.

They’re probably going to claim that voters will look at the combination of the two and dismiss all people from Chicago when they vote in the November general election.

I DON’T DOUBT that some people will think that. But I think those residents of Anna, Dixon and likeminded places likely would have felt that way regardless of the circumstances. And I’m not convinced there are enough of them to swing an election.

So now we can see what Blagojevich might seriously be hoping for. What if we got both verdicts on the same day? Could Milorod wind up becoming an afterthought?

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Mark your calendar – June 3, 2010

Republicans in Illinois who are determined to use the image of Rod Blagojevich to try to boost the electoral chances of every single GOP candidate on the ballot in next year’s elections ought to give a big thanks to U.S. District Judge James Zagel.

He is the judge who is presiding over the upcoming trial of Blagojevich, whom federal prosecutors say engaged in all sorts of corrupt activity during his six years as governor.

ZAGEL ON THURSDAY set a date for the trial.

Now in the world of courtroom antics, nothing is ever set in stone. Dates can always be changed, deadlines extended.

So there’s always a chance that June 3 of next year will turn out to be nothing more than a routine Thursday at the Dirksen Federal Building.

But that is the date Zagel told the defense attorneys he wants to actually begin jury selection for the Blagojevich proceedings.

WITH THE LIKELIHOOD that such proceedings will take a few weeks, and the actual presentation of evidence for and against Milorod taking a couple of months, then giving the jury time to wade through the mounds of testimony that they will be buried in next summer, it is very possible that the Blagojevich case could reach a verdict some time around Labor Day.

In electoral circles, Labor Day is also the time when campaigns for statewide and federal offices step up their activities. It is the time when regular people start paying attention to who is running for what (prior to that date, it is only the campaign junkies – most of whom have an ideological bias against a candidate from the start – who pay any attention).

So there is a very good chance that right at about the time people are starting to pay much attention to who is running for U.S. Senate from Illinois, or for governor or any of the other state constitutional posts, there will be fresh news to report.

In the imaginations of the Republicans, that news will be “Blago Guilty!” Of what, we don’t know. Not that it really matters.

ALL IT WILL take is for a few of the charges against Blagojevich to result in a “guilty” verdict for the GOP to start screeching that all Democrats are just like Milorod.

Despite Blagojevich’s attorneys repeated statements that he’s “not guilty then, and he’s not guilty now,” it would be a surprise if federal prosecutors were not able to trip up the former governor in some sort of technicality. Beating a criminal charge in U.S. District Court is next to impossible, and Blagojevich doesn’t have much to bargain with these days in terms of trying to negotiate a guilty plea to a lesser charge.

There’s even another potential plus. If the trial were to wrap up around Labor Day and if Zagel were to give himself a couple of months to ponder the case before imposing a sentence, that would put the actual sentencing for Blagojevich sometime in late October or early November.

Election Day next year is Nov. 2.

WHAT BETTER FINAL image would there be for the Republican hopes (which quite frankly may be long shots even with the presence of Blagojevich in the Illinois political air) than to literally see the former governor receive a prison sentence (no matter how little, it will be presented by partisan operatives as a major event) in the days before Election Day.

Now realize that much of this scenario is speculation on my part, based on my past observations of how long it can take to get through a criminal trial at the federal court level.

The only hard-and-fast fact is that Zagel literally did set the June 3 date, saying he wants to begin the trial as quickly as possible.

For those people who say that a date nearly a full year away is not quick enough, keep in mind that there are nearly 3 million documents that the Blagojevich legal defense team has to work their way through to try to figure out exactly how they will defend his behavior.

HOW WILL THEY try to claim that the goofy antics we saw Blagojevich partake in were merely stupid, and not illegal? To me, that is the aspect of the trial I am waiting to hear – all the rest is nothing more than trivia.

If Zagel were to try to push for a trial sooner, he’d be giving the defense attorneys a legitimate legal grounds for an appeal – which could result in any conviction being thrown out and the federal prosecutors having to repeat the whole process of trying to put Blagojevich on trial.

As it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if Blagojevich’s legal team tries to argue for more time. Not that I think Zagel would give it to them, but I’m sure there are some people who would prefer if the whole Blagojevich affair were to come to a head in December, or perhaps in January 2010.

By then, the elections would be past. I don’t think that Lisa Madigan taking the oath of office for whatever government post she ultimately decides to run for would care much what happens to Blagojevich if its potential political impact on her is kept to a minimum.

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