Eighteen jurors headed home from Chicago’s latest public corruption trial Monday for what will be their final opportunity to cast a ballot in Tuesday’s election — but before they left, they got a reminder that “freedom is not a spectator sport.”
“If anyone knows that, that’s you guys,” U.S. District Judge John Blakey told them.
The group has spent the last two weeks listening to testimony about what prosecutors say is “corruption at the highest levels of state government” in the racketeering conspiracy trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan.
The allegations go back years, with little relation to present-day politics. Still, jurors spent Election Day eve listening to witnesses discuss political campaigns, the machinery of Chicago ward politics, and behind-the-scenes dealings that were secretly recorded by the FBI.
They did so while being secluded in Blakey’s 12th-floor courtroom at the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, away from the swirling headlines about the contest between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Blakey sent the jurors home for the night around 5 p.m., having already announced that they’d be given an extra two hours to vote Tuesday before testimony resumes. But before they left, Blakey told them that “freedom and the rule of law is not the norm in human history.”
Blakey called the United States a “pretty big family, and like most families, we have our disagreements.” Still, he called the United States a “bright moment in human history.”
“A lot of people sacrificed everything to make it possible,” Blakey said. “So it is very easy to get cynical and depressed — and maybe angry — when you’re casting your vote tomorrow.”
But the judge encouraged each of the 12 jurors and six alternates to vote. Additionally, he told them to do it “with pride in your country.”
“And do it with gratitude,” he said, “for those who made it possible.”