Jurors in the Qwest fraud trial have reached verdicts on more than half the charges against four defendants but are deadlocked on the other charges.
“We have reached decisions on 24 of 44 possible charges,” the jury wrote to Judge Robert Blackburn, presiding in U.S. District Court in Denver. “At this point we are not able to reach unanimous decisions on the remaining charges.”
The note was submitted to Blackburn on Monday and disclosed publicly Tuesday morning. The jurors asked the judge for guidance. He told them Tuesday to keep deliberating.
Thomas W. Hall, John M. Walker, Grant P. Graham and Bryan K. Treadway each face 11 counts of securities and wire fraud, conspiracy and false statements. Prosecutors allege they manipulated a sales deal to help Qwest improperly book $33.6 million in revenue during the second quarter of 2001 and meet financial targets.
If convicted, the defendants face up to a 10-year prison sentence on each count.
The jury’s note didn’t reveal their verdicts or which defendants the verdicts applied to.
Tuesday marked the jury’s seventh day of deliberations, which continue today. Legal experts say seven days of deliberations is long for a fraud and conspiracy case.
“It’s possible that the jury could come in with a partial verdict,” said John Coffee, a professor of law at Columbia Law School in New York, who specializes in securities fraud and white-collar crime.
Under that scenario, the defendants could be convicted or acquitted of any of the charges. The government could then retry the defendants on the charges the jury couldn’t reach unanimous decisions on, Coffee said.
On Tuesday, Blackburn denied the prosecution’s request to give jurors a so-called Allen charge, which encourages jurors to reconsider their positions and reach common ground. The charge is generally only given once a jury indicates it believes it can’t reach unanimous verdicts on all charges.
Blackburn can still issue an Allen charge later, but probably won’t, said Ted Fiflis, a professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder.
“It’s one technique that some judges use, but it has a flavor of a certain amount of pressurizing,” Fiflis said.
Blackburn can also sequester the jury if he finds that there are one or two holdout jurors who are preventing the jury from reaching unanimous decisions on all charges. Sequestering a jury is fairly uncommon, Fiflis said.
Fiflis said Qwest jurors may be hung up on the three counts of securities fraud that each of the defendants face. The jury twice asked Blackburn last week to clarify the meaning of “willfully,” which relates to the securities fraud charges.
Blackburn has told the jury that a conviction for securities fraud requires that the defendants be found to have acted “willfully,” meaning they knew they were doing something wrong, even if they didn’t know it was illegal.
Each of the three securities fraud charges carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $1 million fine. The defendants each face one charge of conspiracy, which has a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
They also face one charge each of making false statements and six counts of wire fraud. Each of those charges carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
