Trial of Michael Madigan LIVE updates: FBI agent expected to take the stand in former Illinois speaker’s trial

A jury has been selected for the corruption trial of former House Speaker Michael Madigan.

On Monday morning, the jury consisted of eight women and four men, but two more alternates were chosen during the day.

Jury selection for Madigan’s trial was always going to be a slow and deliberate process. Because of the high-profile nature of the case, Judge Blakey agreed this summer to keep the names of potential jurors anonymous and to interview them individually after completing a lengthy questionnaire.

But selecting the 12-member jury and six alternate jurors from the nearly 200 jurors took more than twice as long as originally planned. By the time the final deputies are chosen on Monday, the seven-day process will have lasted longer than the entire related AT&T trial last month.

The dozens of potential jurors who reached the courtroom for questioning were largely white and also disproportionately older, likely reflecting the number of working-age members of the pool who were immediately eliminated because they were unable to commit to a trial of an estimated eleven to keep for weeks. .

After spending an average of more than half an hour with each prospective juror during questioning to uncover any unconscious biases, the sides finally found their twelfth member on Thursday morning. The jury consists of a racially diverse group of eight women and four men, ranging from their early 20s to retirees.

Judges include a teacher, an Amazon warehouse worker and a Goodwill donation center worker. The jury also includes a number of health care workers, including a night nurse and two who work in patient scheduling at individual Chicago hospitals.

The final juror works at yet another Chicago hospital and told a Madigan attorney that he had heard the speaker’s name but was unsure what position he had held.

“I know he’s been a leader for a long time, a household name in Illinois and the city, but I’m a little embarrassed to be honest…I don’t follow politics that much,” he said.

But most of the jury is in the same boat. Some were vaguely aware of the Madigan case and last year’s ComEd trial from headlines and mentions on TV news, though others had never heard the speaker’s name before.

One juror confessed that when she told her best friend about her jury summons, the friend predicted she would be called for the Madigan case — and told her to “vote guilty” for the longtime Democratic power broker.

“She’s a Trumper,” the judge said of her friend, referring to her support of former President Donald Trump. “She really hates all Democrats, except maybe me.”

The same juror also elicited a rare moment of laughter from Madigan when she told his attorney Tom Breen that he looked like actor Eric Roberts.

Even the judge joined the reaction of the rest of the courtroom.

“Erik Roberts?” Blakey repeated incredulously. “Wow.”