Madigan guilty of bribery conspiracy as jury returns partial verdict

CHICAGO – Former Democratic Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longest-serving legislative leader in U.S. history, has joined the list of Illinois political figures who’ve been convicted on public corruption charges after a federal jury Wednesday found him guilty on 10 of 23 counts.

But the jury, which deliberated for roughly 65 hours over two weeks following a marathon three months of evidence and testimony, was split in its verdict. They acquitted the former speaker on seven other charges and ultimately deadlocked on six counts.

Read more: Madigan Trial in Review | Michael Madigan: The Rise and Fall

Madigan’s co-defendant, veteran Springfield lobbyist Mike McClain, walked free after the jury deadlocked on the same charges. Prosecutors alleged the ex-speaker and McClain – his close friend dating back to the 1970s when they were young legislators in the Illinois House – ran a “criminal enterprise” meant to preserve and enhance Madigan’s political power, in addition to enriching them and their allies.

But the jury did not return a verdict in the overarching racketeering charge against the two men.

“My head is spinning,” McClain told reporters in the lobby of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse late Wednesday morning.

Madigan exited the courthouse 20 minutes earlier, declining to comment to Chicago Tribune reporter Ray Long, who’d published a book on the former speaker in 2022, but shaking his hand and smiling before getting on the elevator down to the lobby. Madigan continued to ignore reporters while he, his attorneys, and two of his daughters walked across the street from the courthouse in the falling snow.

As the courtroom deputy read the jury’s verdict Wednesday morning, the 82-year-old Madigan sat stone-faced at the head of his defense table in U.S. District Judge John Blakey’s wood-paneled courtroom – the same spot he’s spent nearly every weekday since early October when jury selection for the trial began.

McClain was similarly emotionless while the verdict was read but appeared to get emotional after his family members got teary-eyed when it became clear the jury had deadlocked on the McClain-specific counts.

The jury’s decision comes four years since Madigan mostly stepped away from politics, having been forced to give up his speaker’s gavel amid growing pressure from his own Democratic House caucus in January 2021 as a federal criminal investigation into his inner circle drew nearer. In the weeks that followed his demotion back to a mere state representative, the former speaker would also resign from the legislative seat he’d held for five decades and from his position as chair of the state’s Democratic Party.

Read more: 4 decades after rising to power and nearly 4 years since his fall, former Speaker Madigan goes to trial

Even after Madigan retreated from public life, it took another year for a grand jury to indict him on 22 counts – later upped to 23 – of racketeering, bribery, extortion and wire fraud, alleging he both solicited and accepted bribes to benefit him both politically and personally.

Unlike the defendants, one juror agreed to speak with reporters outside the courthouse as Madigan and his group passed by. The juror, who declined to give his name, said he was surprised to learn that McClain had been convicted in 2023 in a trial featuring much of the same evidence as the one that ended Wednesday.

He said his fellow jurors struggled over some counts, like the overarching racketeering charge. But he cited one count as clear: an allegation that Madigan participated in a bribery conspiracy to get five of his allies no-work contracts with electric utility Commonwealth Edison. Prosecutors alleged the contracts were meant as bribes to Madigan in order to grease the wheels for legislation the utility supported in Springfield.

“That was absolutely there,” the juror said of the government’s evidence that Madigan was aware of the no-work contracts – despite his claims that he didn’t know about them.

But the jury deadlocked on a similar bribery charge in which both Madigan and McClain were alleged to have arranged a similar scheme with AT&T Illinois.

Speaking to reporters an hour after the verdict was delivered, acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Morris Pasquale said there had not yet been a decision on whether to retry Madigan on the counts over which jury had deadlocked. Still, he framed the split decision as a win.

“Bribery – whether it’s the old-fashioned cash stuffed in an envelope or the more refined version practiced by Madigan – is still illegal, it’s still corrupt and it’s still against the law, and it still undermines public confidence in government,” he said. “Public officials can choose to violate the public trust can and should be held accountable.”

This story was updated.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.