Looks like Rod Blagojevich escaped by the skin of his teeth.  He was found guilty on only one of 24 counts against him in his corruption trial, lying to the feds… but we’re now learning he came very close to being convicted of several other more serious counts.   A couple of jurors are speaking out about what happened behind closed doors, in deliberations.

Juror #128, Erik Sarnello says nearly all the of the six men and six women on the jury thought the former Illinois governor was guilty of trying to sell Barack Obama’s former senate seat.  Its the main reason Blago was brought to trial.  The vote among the jury on those charges was 11-1, meaning there was just one person out of the twelve who didn’t agree he was guilty.  “She wanted a smoking gun” Sarnello says.  She wanted more obvious proof than just phone conversations.  She held her ground.  On the other counts, the votes were split more evenly… and that meant the jury was “hung” on all but the one charge of lying to the feds.  It was the simplest of the charges and wasn’t dependent on any wiretap recordings for proof.

It was very emotional in the jury room at the beginning, Sarnello says, and some jurors complained of feeling “attacked” by the others for disagreeing.

Despite trying to weed them out during jury selection, Sarnello says some jurors had pretty much decided whether Blago was guilty or not, right from the beginning, especially the lone holdout juror  “She did have some ideas in her head about things that happened before the trial, that the government was out to get him…the way they treated him, arrested him at his house at 6 in the morning… she felt it was unfair to him”.   It’s a repeat of a lot of what Blago himself said during one of his many press conferences.  The message must have stuck.

Sarnello says he thinks the showmanship of defense attorneys Sam Adam and Sam Adam junior was effective, and kept everyone’s attention. But the prosecutor’s performance was confusing, ”We didn’t feel that it followed a timeline”.  Once jurors layed out all the evidence during deliberations, it did it start to make sense.

The prosecution promises a retrial, and at least some of the jurors agree that should happen.  Sarnello says it doesn’t matter to him either way.  “I’m not that emotionally involved over it” he says.

Click here to see comments from juror #128 on the evidence and on the one holdout juror:{VignetteVideo assettitl=”Blago+juror+interview” id=”968C7C4042BE104717D0B8EB51C3FB69″ width=”375″ aspectratio=”1.77″ height=”211″ autoplay=”off” }

And the Circus doesn’t end there.  Tomorrow…its Blago for sale!  Fans will be able to own a piece of Rod Blagojevich.  A storage locker he was renting went unpaid, so the contents are going to be auctioned off tomorrow, with proceeds going to Children’s Hospital–the same hospital he’s accused of trying to extort for campaign funds.

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