After a long weekend to reflect, jurors in the ComEd4 case returned to Chicago’s Federal Courthouse and delivered guilty verdicts to all four defendants.

The Chicago Tribune puts it this way:

“In a sweeping verdict, a federal jury on Wednesday convicted the “ComEd Four” defendants on all charges related to a conspiracy to bribe ex-Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan to win his support for the utility’s legislative agenda in Springfield.”

There were twenty-seven hours of deliberations.

Summarizing the charges, the Tribune wrote,

“The indictment alleged the four conspired to funnel $1.3 million in payments to ghost ‘subcontractors,’ largely through Doherty’s company, who were actually Madigan’s cronies.”

Specific legislation that raised electric rates for the power company included

• the 2011 smart grid bill that set a built-in formula for the rates ComEd could charge customers, avoiding battles with the Illinois Commerce Commission
• the Future Energy Jobs Act in 2016, which kept the formula rate in place and also rescued two nuclear plants run by an affiliated company, Exelon Generation.

Lead prosecuting Attorney Amarjeet Bachua described the eight-year bribery scheme as a “corruption toll to make sure that Mr. Madigan was not an obstacle to their legislative agenda. And they paid that toll every month, from 2011 to 2019 when they were caught.”

My former legislative colleague Mike McClain put it this way in a wiretapped conservation: ““We had to hire these guys because Mike Madigan came to us. That’s how simple it is.”

One juror explained the logic like this:

According to the Tribune, member of the jury Schnitker Sayers said,

“If it wouldn’t have been for him [Mike Madigan] then these people would not be in the position … to commit the crimes in the first place…

Juror Sayers, a Chicago veterinaian, said “we want politics to run in a correct manner. And we would really like the government to know that we as citizens all want to see that done in a correct manner, without any shady business behind the scenes that either skirts the rules or blatantly disregards them.”

But she added that the jury thought the defendants were “good people.”