Life imitates art as prosecutors left frustrated

Opinion

I recently started watching the show The Wire on DVD. I never saw it on TV. It screened late and was easy to miss.

It's gritty stuff. The cops try to crack drug rings by listening in on criminals' conversations on tapped phones. At least they do in the first series, which is as far as I am up to.

It's apparently such a true portrayal of life on the rough streets of Baltimore that it left the city's cops and drug dealers feeling they lacked authenticity.

The Wire also shows that the bad guys aren't always bad and that the good guys aren't always good. Drug dealers often have a softer side. And the cops beat up people because they think they can get away with it. It's not the first time American cops have been portrayed as thugs on TV. It must be said, though, that the public would probably find the brutality of the police force more believable on The Wire than what they have seen on other shows, such as, say, the 6 o'clock news.

The Wire also highlights how tedious it is to listen in on hours of conversations and how difficult it can be to get charges to stick even when an accused is on tape saying something that seems incriminating.

Prosecutors in Chicago must have felt that same frustration this week. Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was in court on 24 charges including racketeering, wire fraud, attempted extortion and bribery.

But on Wednesday, the jury, after deliberating for 14 days, said it was hung on 23 of the charges and found him guilty on just one, making false statements to the FBI.

Prosecutors say they will try Blagojevich again but they must have thought they had a clean-cut case the first time round.

Blagojevich was accused of, among other things, trying to sell the United States Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama when he became President. Federal agents recorded conversations that painted him as a foul-mouthed little man who would do anything to get what he wanted. His language was so offensive that even when all the cursing was bleeped out he still said "F*** YOU" in Morse code.

In one conversation relating to Obama's Senate seat, the two-term Democrat tells an aide, "I've got this thing, and it's [expletive] golden. I'm just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing."

Blagojevich's brother, Robert, who was also on trial on four of the charges, says his brother was just interested in political horse-trading and not corruption.

But Blagojevich, a two-term Democrat whose eyes are so close together it's hard not to think he's hiding something, exited the court with the swagger of a man who had just beaten the system.

"On every charge except for one, they could not prove that I did anything wrong," he said. "I told the truth from the very beginning."

Well, except when making statements to the FBI, but then Blagojevich plans to appeal that decision.

Like any good courtroom drama, the Blagojevich case no doubt has a few twists left in its tail.