Jury deadlocks, mistrial declared in case of ex-AT&T boss accused of bribing Madigan

September 20, 2024 | By HANNAH MEISEL, CAPITOL NEWS ILLINOIS

CHICAGO – A federal judge on Thursday declared a mistrial after a jury deadlocked in their deliberations over whether former AT&T Illinois President Paul La Schiazza bribed longtime Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan via a no-work contract for the speaker’s political ally.

After nearly 15 hours of deliberation over three days, the jury’s foreperson told U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman that she was “absolutely positive” she and her fellow jurors could not find a way out of their stalemate.

“We’re all disappointed in a way,” Gettleman said as he discharged the jury. “That’s the way it works. We need a unanimous verdict and sometimes we don’t get it.”

The parties will meet again early next week to decide next steps, including whether there will be a retrial. La Schiazza, who retired from AT&T in 2019 and now lives out of state, stood stoically at the defense table as the jury communicated its lack of a decision to Gettleman.

La Schiazza was charged nearly two years ago in a five-count indictment that alleged he engaged in a conspiracy to bribe Madigan in 2017. Prosecutors claimed he did so by arranging for AT&T to indirectly pay recently retired state Rep. Eddie Acevedo $22,500 over a nine-month period in which Acevedo did no work for the company.

In exchange, the feds alleged Madigan allowed legislation that AT&T had been pushing for years to pass through the Illinois House, eventually saving the company hundreds of millions of dollars annually. At the time, Illinois was one of only two states that still had 1930s-era laws on the books obligating AT&T to maintain its aging copper landline system. The company wanted to be able to instead invest that money in newer technologies like broadband and wireless, as its competitors were free to do.

The first indication the jury might be struggling to reach a conclusion came Wednesday, when the foreperson sent Gettleman a note asking for clarification on whether federal bribery law actually requires proof of an exchange or merely intent in order to convict. The judge did not directly answer the inquiry but re-read the instructions he had previously given the jury. On Thursday morning, the jury sent another note indicating a stalemate, and Gettleman once again re-read the lengthy instructions and asked jurors to try once again.

Before the jury returned to the courtroom Thursday afternoon, the judge told the parties that based on the volume of conversations heard through the door to the jury room, “they were trying really hard.”

Prosecutors had wanted to send a note back to the jury to remind them that they could return a partial verdict, but Gettleman agreed with La Schiazza’s attorneys that an instruction like that could unduly influence the jury.

“I respect the jury too much to start suggesting they didn’t get it right,” he told the parties before jurors re-entered the courtroom. “It could be there’s some people who say, ‘I can’t convict this guy’ or ‘I’m gonna convict him on everything because I don’t like the way things go on in Springfield.’”

After being dismissed, jurors agreed to speak to La Schiazza’s attorneys, who jotted down notes while gathered around the defense table as they asked about specific arguments they employed in the case. Jurors also debriefed with prosecutors in a conference room across the hall from the courtroom.

During the trial, jurors were not told that AT&T agreed to a $23 million deferred prosecution agreement when La Schiazza was charged, meaning the company admitted to the bribery. Nor were they told that Madigan will face trial on related charges next month.

Throughout trial, attorneys for La Schiazza maintained AT&T’s government affairs team had spent more than seven years on a sophisticated lobbying strategy and that La Schiazza and his colleagues had started to see the fruits of their labor in 2015 – long before Acevedo’s contract.

Both sides agreed that Madigan’s close confidant Mike McClain, a recently retired Statehouse lobbyist, had suggested to an AT&T lobbyist that the company find “a small contract” for Acevedo in early 2017. But La Schiazza’s attorneys emphasized that it was not unusual for lobbyists to be approached about jobs and contracts, and that AT&T’s government affairs team wanted to be “responsive” to those in Madigan’s orbit in order to not “rock the boat” with the powerful speaker.

Further, they claimed that none of the evidence shown during trial proved that McClain, who was known for being braggadocious about his relationship with the speaker, was directed by Madigan to find Acevedo a contract with AT&T.

The feds urged the jury to consider the timing of McClain’s email to AT&T lobbyist Robert Barry asking about a contract for Acevedo. That Feb. 14, 2017, email, they pointed out, came just four hours after La Schiazza and his colleagues heard good news in a separate email informing them that Madigan had agreed to a sit-down meeting to discuss AT&T’s bill.

Two days later, La Schiazza spoke with McClain, who informed the AT&T boss that the speaker had assigned the company’s bill to McClain as a “special project,” per an email La Schiazza sent his colleagues after the call.

“Game on,” he wrote in the note.

Over four days of testimony by more than a dozen witnesses – including several FBI agents – prosecutors showed the jury dozens of emails between La Schiazza and the executive team at AT&T Illinois. Many of them were dated during the period in 2017 when lobbyists arranged for the Acevedo contract and La Schiazza approved it.

La Schiazza’s attorneys declined to call any defense witnesses and La Schiazza did not take the stand. But his legal team engaged in lengthy cross-examination of government witnesses, particularly retired AT&T lobbyist Steve Selcke, who appeared under an immunity deal with the feds.

In emails shown during trial, Selcke suggested to La Schiazza and the rest of the lobbying team that having Acevedo register as a lobbyist for AT&T would cause issues with Republicans the company was counting on to deliver votes. Another email to La Schiazza from lobbyist Brian Gray indicated that he and Selcke had agreed that a better path forward would be to indirectly pay Acevedo through an existing contract with AT&T’s external lobbyist Tom Cullen.

In the same email chain, Gray and La Schiazza both discussed making sure that AT&T would receive “credit” for contracting with Acevedo. But during questioning from both prosecutors and La Schiazza’s attorneys last week, Selcke said he didn’t believe that the Acevedo contract had anything to do with AT&T’s legislation, nor did it constitute a bribe.

La Schiazza attorney Jack Dodds asked Selcke if “credit” was “code word for a bribe,” to which Selcke said it wasn’t.

“Because that’s not what you thought you were doing, was it?” Dodds asked.

“It was not,” he said.

After defense attorneys pointed back to that portion of Selcke’s testimony during closing arguments Tuesday, prosecutors sought to lessen the potential weight of that exchange for the jury, telling jurors during rebuttal that “what Mr. Selcke believed does not say what the defendant believed.”

The jury also heard from Cullen during trial, who testified that he had little involvement with Acevedo beyond acting as the conduit for AT&T’s payments to the retired lawmaker. Unlike Selcke, Cullen was unequivocal in his belief that Acevedo did not do any work for AT&T during the nine months for which Cullen cut him $2,500 monthly checks.

Acevedo has already served a six-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to tax evasion related to his lobbying business.

The government also claimed that the assignment Acevedo was given – a report on the internal political dynamics of the Latino caucuses of the Illinois General Assembly and Chicago City Council – was made up so the contract would seem more legitimate, which Cullen’s testimony corroborated.

“Hey, have you seen that report?” Cullen recalled jokingly asking an AT&T lobbyist toward the end of 2017. “I think neither of us expected there to have been a report.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.