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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF INDIANA

HAMMOND DIVISION

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

vs.

ETHEL SHELTON and ALEX WHEELER,

Defendants.

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Cause No.:

2:14-CR-129

Hammond, Indiana

April 13, 2018

VOLUME 10

TRANSCRIPT OF JURY TRIAL

BEFORE THE HONORABLE JOSEPH S. VAN BOKKELEN

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

APPEARANCES:

For the Government: MARIA N. LERNER and

ABIZER ZANZI

ASSISTANT UNITED STATES ATTORNEY

UNITED STATES ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

5400 Federal Plaza, Suite 1500

Hammond, Indiana 46320

(219) 937-5500

For the Defendant, ANDREA E. GAMBINO

Ethel Shelton: LAW OFFICES OF ANDREA E. GAMBINO

53 W. Jackson Boulevard, Suite 224

Chicago, Illinois 60601

(312) 322-0014

agambinolaw@gmail.com

For the Defendant, LARRY W. ROGERS

Alex Wheeler: ROGERS LAW OFFICE

2801 Bertholet Boulevard, Suite 301

Valparaiso, Indiana 46383

(219) 476-0443

lwrogerslawoffice@gmail.com

Proceedings reported by stenotype. Transcript produced by

computer-aided transcription.

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INDEX

Jury Instructions by the Court 17

Closing Argument - Government

By Ms. Lerner 38

Closing Argument - Defendant Ethel Shelton

By Ms. Gambino 93

Closing Argument - Defendant Alex Wheeler

By Mr. Rogers 127

Rebuttal Argument - Government

By Ms. Lerner 153

Final Instructions of the Court 170

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(The following proceedings were held in open court

commencing at 9:13 a.m., reported as follows:)

(Call to Order of the Court.)

THE COURT: You can all be seated.

It's the Court's intention to give instructions

numbered 1 through 47, which I believe you have those

instructions. Those instructions were a result of yesterday

afternoon's meeting, e-mails, and so forth. Anyway, it's the

Court's intention to give those instructions as you have them,

1 through 47.

Does the government have any objections to those

instructions?

MR. ZANZI: Your Honor, we don't have any

objections, but I think because the instructions came about

pursuant to some discussions that were off the record, I think

for the record, I think we just need to state some things on

the record.

THE COURT: Go ahead.

MR. ZANZI: This is specifically with respect to two

instructions. The discussions yesterday, Your Honor, were

largely in chambers and during the jury instruction conference

where in an attempt to clarify or simplify the distinction

between conspiracy versus the substantive counts.

And during the discussions, the parties and the

Court -- decisions were made to eliminate some definitions

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relating to the underlying elements. I think because we're

doing that, I think there needs to be a statement on the record

that the parties are in agreement on that. Otherwise, the

record could be muddied if anyone's reviewing it at some later

date.

THE COURT: Right. Last night when this -- you

know, this became a pretty fluid discussion.

MR. ZANZI: So I can identify two and --

THE COURT: Identify what it is because last night,

I told my staff that there had been an agreement at the

conference at least on a certain set of instructions. We then

proposed some modifications. I don't think they were

fundamental modifications, but there were modifications. And

my position was it's going to be one or the other. We're not

going to go through the whole process again because I've got a

jury I've got to get to and get them going on this case.

So any record you want to make regarding that, I

would appreciate. It's down to two choices, either the one we

agreed to at the conclusion of the conference or the revised

ones that were submitted to you later that night. And, plus,

you had some, I call them, mechanical changes too, which I

think we incorporated.

MR. ZANZI: Well, Your Honor, the government doesn't

object to final instructions written except to the extent that

we just want to clarify the record --

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THE COURT: Go ahead and make the clarification.

MR. ZANZI: We just ask that there is an

acknowledgment from the all parties that there is an agreement

so that if anyone is ever looking at this record, at least we

know what was done in chambers.

THE COURT: Right.

MR. ZANZI: There's two instructions, one regarding

government's proposed -- this is from Docket Entry 173, which

was the government's proposed revised instructions after the

Court had --

THE COURT: Wait just a second -- I'm trying to

figure out how to do this mechanically. I had Vilius -- over

the years I found out that you have to take everything out of

my binder that I'm not going to read. I have a habit of

reading -- looking through, I start reading stuff that should

have been out. So they took everything out of my binder now

except --

MR. ZANZI: I have the two pages I'm going to talk

about.

THE COURT: Okay. Just read those into the record.

MR. ZANZI: I will.

THE COURT: And also reference the final

instructions.

MR. ZANZI: Well, Your Honor, these are about the

elimination of two instructions.

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THE COURT: Yeah. Just go ahead and do what you're

going to do.

MR. ZANZI: Sure. If we need clarification, I'm

happy to do so. This comes from Docket Entry 173, the

government's proposed revised instructions.

The first one was government's proposed revised

instruction number 30 pertaining to defining the definition of

material. It reads: "A false or fraudulent pretense,

representation, promise, omission, or concealment" --

THE COURT REPORTER: Can you slow down.

MR. ZANZI: Sure. Sorry.

"A false or fraudulent pretense, representation,

promise, omission, or concealment is material if it is capable

of influencing the decision of the persons to whom it was

addressed. It is not necessary that the false or fraudulent

pretense, representation, promise, omission, or concealment

actually have that influence or be relied on by the alleged

victim, as long as it is capable of doing so."

That proposed instruction comes from the pattern

criminal jury instruction from the Seventh Circuit regarding

the definition of material. It is the government's

understanding that all parties are in agreement to remove this

instruction.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. ZANZI: And I'm going to read the second one,

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and I just ask that the parties acknowledge that this was

actually the agreement. If it's not, then we'll address that

too.

The second instruction, Your Honor, is --

THE COURT: Let me stop that first one.

Ms. Gambino, is that your understanding?

MS. GAMBINO: Yes. Can you also refer to the number

of the Court's instruction that was? The way I went through

this was to make notes from last night according to the Court's

instruction number.

MR. ZANZI: The problem is we removed this

instruction entirely, so I don't have it as one of the Court's

instructions. Oh, do you mean from the Court's instructions

that were given to us yesterday?

MS. GAMBINO: Yes.

MR. ZANZI: I can do that. Just give me a second.

So this particular instruction that also the Court provided

prior to the jury instruction conference yesterday, proposed

instructions, one of the proposed instructions was jury

instruction number 36. That was the one that was removed,

Your Honor. So I just -- before I move to the next one, I want

to clarify the record that this is actually the agreement of

the parties to remove the instruction.

MS. GAMBINO: Yes, it is.

MR. ZANZI: And from Mr. Rogers as well.

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MR. ROGERS: Yes.

MR. ZANZI: Okay. One more for the record,

Your Honor. The second instruction relates to the definition

of interstate communications. It was in Document Entry 173,

the government's proposed revised instruction number 36. I can

read the whole instruction, or I can at least read part of it

so it reflects the record.

It starts out with: "The government must prove that

the interstate communication facilities were used to carry out

the scheme or were incidental to an essential part of the

scheme." And it goes further to supply additional definitions

regarding wire communications. It comes from the Seventh

Circuit pattern instruction for use of interstate

communication.

I don't know if this was in the Court's proposed

instructions, but the parties had a discussion about the

inclusion of this proposed instruction. And I just want to

clarify the record, there's an agreement to remove that

instruction.

THE COURT: And it's in the final set that I've

presented to the parties.

MR. ZANZI: It's not.

THE COURT: Oh, it's not. Okay.

MR. ZANZI: What I'm asking for is a clarification

on the record -- and I can show this to defense counsel if they

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want to see it -- that there was an agreement not to include

this instruction.

MS. GAMBINO: I recall that, yes, that's true.

THE COURT: Mr. Rogers?

MR. ROGERS: I do also.

MR. ZANZI: I just wanted to memorialize that for

the record. Other than that, Your Honor, we have no

objections.

THE COURT: Okay. As to Ms. Gambino, do you have

any instructions [verbatim] as to what instructions the Court's

going to give?

MS. GAMBINO: Your Honor, no. I don't have any

objections to the instructions the Court is going to give.

There are objections that I had yesterday, and I just wanted to

note those for the record.

THE COURT: Okay. We'll do that in a minute.

Mr. Rogers, do you have any objections to the

instructions the Court's going to give?

MR. ROGERS: I do not.

THE COURT: Okay. Do you have any other objections,

Ms. Gambino, you want to put on the record?

MS. GAMBINO: Your Honor, I just want to go through

a couple of things and, as a preference, say that the current

instructions reflect the changes and the discussions that we

had at our conference yesterday. This is with regard to the

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Court's original instructions number 13, which dealt with

inconsistent statements or statements of Ms. Shelton. The word

"inconsistent" was taken out of that instruction.

With respect to 14, this is the instruction with

respect to Stafford Garbutt. The government objected to saying

that he was promised benefits, and the Court replaced that with

"believed he was promised."

With respect to Court's instruction 17, we objected

to the giving of this instruction. This was the instruction

that the -- using an informant is permitted. And we objected

to that based on our position that it appears to give the

imprimatur of the Court to use the informant. That objection

was overruled.

We objected to Court's instruction 23, which dealt

with persons who order or authorize are also responsible for

the act, and that instruction was withdrawn.

Court's instruction 29, we objected to language in

that definition of a conspiracy saying that a conspiracy may be

proved even if its goal was not accomplished because we took

the position that the instruction should address what needs to

be proved and not what doesn't need to be proved. That

objection was overruled.

Instruction number 30, we objected to Paragraph 2

and 3. Paragraph 2 was stricken and 3 stays in. And, again,

this was a matter regarding what doesn't need to be proved and

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suggested lowering of the burden.

With respect to Court's instruction 32, we objected

to, "the government is not required to prove all overt acts

charged in the Indictment," because it is redundant and also

addresses what doesn't need to be proved. That objection was

overruled.

Court's instruction 35 we objected to, and it was

taken out. Court's instruction 36 has already been addressed

by Mr. Zanzi.

Court instruction 39, on the definition of kickback,

we asked for the addition of, "for private gain," and that was

done, and that's in the Court's current instructions.

We objected to the Court's instruction number 40,

and it was taken out. Court's instruction 41, the government

objected to Paragraph 2, and that was taken out.

Court's instruction 42, the government objected to

the first sentence in the paragraph, and it was altered to

read, "an official act can include."

Court's instruction 43, we objected and it was taken

out. 44 is our good faith instruction. The government made

some objections to the way it was worded. That was revised,

and it has been included in the current Court's instructions,

as per our discussions.

And, finally, with respect to the verdict forms, I

ask that there be signature lines for all the jurors, and that

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has been done, although I note there is a line missing, Judge.

You're one line short. If we could add a line to the new

verdict form, that would be great.

THE COURT: Okay. We'll do that.

Anything else, Mr. Rogers?

MR. ROGERS: No, Your Honor.

THE COURT: I assume we're ready to go. I'm going

to take a short break just to get my head back on and make sure

I'm pointing the right direction. The Court would note that we

had a number of conferences. One was an informal conference

back in my chambers on the Court's tendered -- proposed

instructions, the parties' proposed instructions, and there was

a lot of negotiating, give and take. And what the Court has

now in its final form represents a lot of that give and take in

it.

Things were taken out. Actually, more things were

taken out than were added back in, which is a good thing. But

the Court believes that this represents each of the side's

positions. They represent fair statements -- correct

statements of the law, and so the Court's going to indicate

that as to any objection to those are overruled, and the Court

intends to give its instructions 1 through 47.

Anything else we need to do before we take a break

and then bring the jury in?

MR. ZANZI: Not from the government's perspective,

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Your Honor.

THE COURT: Defendants?

MS. GAMBINO: Not on behalf of Ms. Shelton.

MR. ROGERS: None from Mr. Wheeler.

THE COURT: And last thing, which I always say,

Ms. Shelton, how are you feeling today?

DEFENDANT SHELTON: I feel great.

THE COURT: Mr. Wheeler, same question.

DEFENDANT WHEELER: Fine, Your Honor.

THE COURT: We'll take a five-minute break. Five

minutes never happens. It takes me five minutes to get to my

chambers. We'll take a ten-minute break and come back and

start with instructions to the jury.

MR. ZANZI: Your Honor, we have talked a little bit

about the Court's proposed instructions before the jury

conference. This is all -- I want to make sure that our

appellate people don't yell at me.

Were those proposed instructions before the

conference, since we've referenced them, are they filed on the

record? And if not, can they be?

THE COURT: The answer is they can be. The

instructions they tendered to us, their proposed instructions,

they're filed, right?

MS. KWAIT: Their proposed instructions are filed.

THE COURT: Try it again.

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MR. ZANZI: So, Your Honor, we have talked about

proposed instructions. Yesterday's jury instruction conference

were discussions -- we were each handed out a set of proposed

instructions, the Court's proposed instructions. I have a

marked-up copy here. But we've had several references to it,

but we actually don't have -- to the numbers. The numbers have

changed because we've moved things and added things.

THE COURT: Right. What we'll try to do is see if

we can put Humpty-Dumpty back together on that. As things come

in and things go out, we get them out so we don't -- at one

time -- it was early in my career as being a judge -- I kept --

we had these different rough drafts. So I come in here and

started reading the instructions, and I started reading the

wrong set of instructions, so they take them away from me.

MR. ZANZI: Yes.

THE COURT: Not only from me, but they take them

away from themselves after it goes out. But we'll try to

recreate that. To the extent we can recreate it, we'll put it

on the record.

MR. ZANZI: We have a copy. I'm happy to cross

reference with anything the defendants have. I'm concerned

about a record referencing instructions where numbers have

changed and somebody ever looking at this down the road and not

figuring out what was said.

THE COURT: What we'll do with both sides, we'll

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make sure that what you've filed, your tendered instructions,

are filed on the record.

MR. ZANZI: I'm talking about the Court's proposed

instructions.

THE COURT: They'll be filed likewise.

MR. ZANZI: Okay. Thank you, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Anything else?

MR. ZANZI: That's it.

THE COURT: Ten minutes at most.

(Recess had at 9:29 a.m., and proceedings resumed in open

court at 9:44 a.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

As to the issue that Mr. Zanzi raised right at the

end, the long and short of it is we have nothing. We've

destroyed about everything we have that we're not using. But

in reality that represents what's going on here. The

objections are going to be what the -- the Court said what it's

going to give.

MR. ZANZI: Your Honor, I think we have a proposal

of how to resolve that, if that's okay.

THE COURT: Okay.

MR. ZANZI: I spoke with Ms. Gambino, and when the

jury deliberates, we both have copies of the Court's proposed

instructions. I think we're both concerned about having a

clear record. We're going to compare and make sure that

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they're accurate. We will provide one to -- and make sure

Mr. Rogers is comfortable as well, and then we'll provide a

copy, if we're both in agreement, that these were the proposed

instructions provided before the jury instruction conference.

We'll provided it to your law clerk, and we'll just ask that if

an -- if that can be filed as well.

THE COURT: We can file that of record. What I'm

saying those is the final instructions are the ones I gave you,

1 through 47. So if you have objections, they've got to be

made to those things. The other ones are just a part of the

process to get us there, as you went through the historical

context of the thing.

MR. ZANZI: But there were references made to the --

THE COURT: No, I understand what you're talking

about so you have a good record -- well, not a good, but

somebody reading that knows what you're talking about. But my

understanding is there are no objections to the Court's

instructions 1 through 47. Is that correct?

MS. GAMBINO: That's correct, Judge.

THE COURT: Okay. Mr. Rogers?

MR. ROGERS: That's correct.

THE COURT: And government?

MR. ZANZI: Yes, Your Honor, correct.

THE COURT: Okay. To the extent you can get me

something you are agreeing on that that's what I gave you, day

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one, that's fine.

MR. ZANZI: Thank you.

THE COURT: Ready for the jury to be brought in?

MR. ZANZI: Yes, Your Honor.

MS. GAMBINO: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. ROGERS: Yes.

THE COURT: Okay. Bring the jury in.

With regard to final arguments, there is two hours

per side. Defendants can break them up however they want to

break them up. If you can't agree, it is an hour per

defendant.

MR. ZANZI: What if the government can't agree?

THE COURT: You'll have to talk to Mr. Hollar about

that. And you don't have to use your two hours. Just

understand there's no obligation.

(Jury in at 9:47 a.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

Members of the jury, the evidence in the case has

been completed and both sides have rested. I will now instruct

you as to the law. This is going to appear -- each one of you

is getting a copy of all these instructions I'm giving you to

take back to the jury room. They're also going to appear on

the monitors in front of you and also appear in the monitors up

there. If everything holds true to form, I'll misread

instructions. It's what you get, not what I may have read

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wrongly.

Members of the jury, I will now instruct you on the

law that you must follow in deciding this case. I will also

give each of you a copy of these instructions to use in the

jury room. You must follow all of my instructions about the

law, even if you disagree with them. This includes the

instructions I gave you before the trial and any instructions I

gave you during the trial, and the instructions I am giving you

now.

As jurors, you have two duties: Your first duty is

to decide the facts from the evidence that you saw and heard

here in court. This is your job, not my job or anyone else's

job. Your second duty is to take the law as I give it to you,

apply it to the facts, and decide if the government has proved

the defendants guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

You must perform these duties fairly and

impartially. Do not let sympathy, prejudice, fear, or public

opinion influence you. In addition, do not let any person's

race, color, religion, national ancestry, or gender influence

you.

You must not take anything I said or did during the

trial as indicating that I have an opinion about the evidence

and about what your verdict should be.

The charges against the defendants are in a document

called an Indictment. You will have a copy of the Indictment

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during your deliberations.

Count 1 of the Indictment charges that from the

spring of 2003 and continuing through the fall of 2014, the

defendants conspired to commit wire fraud.

Count 6 charges that from the spring of 2003 and

continuing through the fall of 2014, defendants conspired to

commit honest services wire fraud.

The defendants have pled not guilty to the charges.

The Indictment is simply the formal way of telling the

defendant what crimes he or she is accused of committing. It

is not evidence that the defendant is guilty. It does not even

raise a suspicion of guilt.

Each defendant is presumed innocent of each of the

charges. This presumption continues throughout the case,

including during your deliberations. It is not overcome unless

from all the evidence in the case you are convinced beyond a

reasonable doubt that a defendant is guilty as charged.

The government has the burden of proving the

defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This burden of

proof stays with the government throughout the case. The

defendant is never required to prove his or her innocence. The

defendant is not required to produce any evidence at all.

You must consider only that evidence you saw and

heard here in court. Do not consider anything you may have

seen or heard outside of court including anything from the

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newspaper, telephone, radio, the internet, or any other source.

The evidence includes only what the witnesses said

when they were testifying under oath, the exhibits that I

allowed into evidence, and the stipulations that the lawyers

agreed to. A stipulation is an agreement that certain facts

are true or that a witness would have given certain testimony.

Nothing else is evidence.

The lawyers' statement and arguments are not

evidence. If what a lawyer said is different from the evidence

as you remember it, the evidence is what counts. The lawyers'

questions and objections likewise are not evidence. It is the

responsibility of the Court to decide which evidence is

admissible and which is not.

A lawyer has a duty to object if he or she thinks a

question is improper. If I sustained objections to questions

the lawyers asked, you must not speculate of what the answers

might have been. If during the trial I struck testimony or

exhibits from the record or told you to disregard something,

you must not consider it.

Give the evidence whatever weight you decide it

deserves. Use your common sense in weighing the evidence, and

consider the evidence in the light of your own everyday

experience.

People sometimes look at one fact and conclude from

it that another fact exists. This is called an inference. You

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are allowed to make reasonable inferences so long as they are

based on the evidence.

You may have heard the terms direct evidence and

circumstantial evidence. Direct evidence is evidence that

directly proves a fact. Circumstantial evidence is evidence

that indirectly proves a fact. You are to consider both direct

and circumstantial evidence. The law does not say that one is

better than the other. It's up to you to decide how much

weight to give to any evidence, whether direct or

circumstantial.

Do not make any decisions simply by counting the

number of witnesses who testified about a certain point. You

may find the testimony of one witness or a few witnesses more

persuasive than the testimony of a larger number. You need not

accept the testimony of the larger number of witnesses. What

is important is how truthful and accurate the witnesses were

and how much weight you think their testimony deserves.

If you have taken notes during the trial, you may

use them during deliberations to help you remember what

happened during the trial. You should use your notes only as

an aid to your memory. The notes are not evidence. All of you

should rely on your independent recollection of the evidence,

and you should not be unduly influenced by the notes of another

juror. Notes are not entitled to any more weight than the

memory or impressions of each juror.

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Part of your job as jurors is to decide how

believable each witness was, how much weight to give each

witness's testimony, including that of a defendant. You may

accept all of what a witness says or part of it or none of it

at all. Some factors you may consider include: The

intelligence of the witness; the witness's ability and

opportunity to see, hear, or know the things the witness

testified about; the witness's memory; the witness's demeanor;

whether the witness had any bias, prejudice, or other reason to

lie or slant the testimony; the truthfulness and accuracy of

the witness's testimony in light of the other evidence

presented; and inconsistent or consistent statements or conduct

by the witness.

A defendant has an absolute right not to testify or

present evidence. You may not consider in any way the fact

that a defendant did not testify or present evidence. You

should not even discuss it in your deliberations.

It is proper for an attorney to interview any

witness in preparation for trial.

You have heard evidence that, before the trial, a

witness made a statement that may be inconsistent with his or

her testimony here in court. You may consider an inconsistent

statement made before the trial only to help you decide how

believable the witness's testimony was here in court.

If an earlier statement was made under oath, then

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you can also consider the earlier statement as evidence of the

truth of whatever the witness said in the earlier statement.

You have heard evidence that before the trial

Ethel Shelton made statements. You may consider these

statements by Ethel Shelton made before the trial to help you

decide how believable Ms. Shelton's testimony was here in court

and also as evidence of the truth of whatever Ms. Shelton said

in the earlier statement.

You have heard testimony from Stafford Garbutt, who

believed he was promised a benefit in return for his

cooperation with the government and has stated that he was

involved in some of the crimes that defendants are charged with

committing.

You may give this witness's testimony whatever

weight you believe is appropriate, keeping in mind that you

must consider that testimony with caution and great care.

You have heard the testimony about Ethel Shelton's

character for truthfulness. You may consider this evidence

only in deciding the believability of Ethel Shelton's testimony

and how much weight to give to it.

You have heard testimony that Alex Wheeler made a

statement to the FBI. You must decide whether Alex Wheeler

actually made the statement and, if so, how much weight to give

to the statement. In making these decisions, you should

consider all evidence including Mr. Wheeler's personal

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characteristics and the circumstances under which the statement

may have been made. You may not consider the statement of

Alex Wheeler as evidence against Ethel Shelton.

You have heard evidence obtained from the

government's use of an informant. The government is permitted

to use informants. You should consider evidence obtained this

way together with and in the same way you consider other

evidence.

You have heard recorded conversations and have seen

a video recording. This is proper evidence that you should

consider, together with and in the same way you consider other

evidence.

You were also given transcripts of the conversations

on the recordings to help you follow the recordings as you

listened to them. The recordings are the evidence of what was

said and who said it. The transcripts are to be used only as

an aid. If you notice differences between what you heard in a

conversation and what you read in the transcripts, your

understanding of the recording is what matters.

In other words, you must rely on what you heard, not

what you read. And if you could not hear or understand certain

parts of the recording, you must ignore the transcripts as far

as those parts are concerned.

It is up to you to decide whether to listen to a

recording or view the video recording during your

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deliberations. You may, if you wish, rely on your recollection

of what you heard during the trial. If you wish to listen to

the recordings or view the video recording, let the Court know

by sending a note through the court security officers.

A summary was admitted in evidence. You may use

that summary as evidence. It's up to you to decide how much

weight to give to the summary.

The Indictment charges that crimes happened on or

about the dates listed in the Indictment. The government must

prove that the crimes happened reasonably close to that time.

The government is not required to prove that the crimes

happened on that exact time.

Defendants have been accused of more than one crime.

The number of charges is not evidence of guilt and should not

influence your decision. You must consider each charge and the

evidence concerning each charge as to each defendant

separately. Your decision on one charge as to a defendant,

whether it is guilty or not guilty, should not influence your

decision on any other charge or as to any other defendant.

In deciding your verdict, you must not consider the

possible punishment for the defendants. If you decide that the

government has proved a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt, then it will be my job to decide what the appropriate

punishment is.

An offense may be committed by more than one person.

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A defendant's guilt may be established without proof that the

defendant personally performed every act constituting the crime

charged.

Any person who knowingly aids the commission of an

offense may be found guilty of that offense if he or she

knowingly participated in the criminal activity and tried to

make it succeed. If a defendant knowingly causes the acts of

another, then the defendant is responsible for those acts as

though he or she personally committed them.

A defendant's presence at the scene of a crime and

knowledge that a crime is being committed is not sufficient by

itself to establish the defendant's guilt.

If a defendant performed acts that advanced the

crime but had no knowledge that the crime was being committed

or was about to be committed, those acts are not sufficient by

themselves to establish the defendant's guilt.

A defendant's association with persons involved in a

crime or a criminal scheme is not sufficient by itself to prove

his or her participation in the crime or membership in the

criminal scheme.

Count 1 of the Indictment charges the defendants

with conspiracy to commit wire fraud. In order for you to find

a defendant guilty of this charge, the government must prove

the following elements as to the defendants beyond a reasonable

doubt:

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One, the conspiracy to commit the crime of wire

fraud as charged in Count 1 existed; two, the defendant

knowingly became a member of the conspiracy with an intent to

advance the conspiracy; and, three, one of the conspirators

committed a least one overt act in an effort to advance the

goal or object of the conspiracy.

If you find from your consideration of all the

evidence the government has proved each of these elements

beyond a reasonable doubt for the charge you are considering,

then you should find that defendant guilty.

If, on the other hand, you find from your

consideration of all the evidence that the government has

failed to prove any one of these elements beyond a reasonable

doubt for the charge you are considering, then you should find

that defendant not guilty.

Count 6 of the Indictment charges the defendants

with conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud. In order

for you to find a defendant guilty of this charge, the

government must prove the following elements as to that

defendant beyond a reasonable doubt:

One, the conspiracy to commit the crime of honest

services wire fraud as charged in Count 6 existed; two, the

defendant knowingly became a member of the conspiracy with the

intent to advance the conspiracy; and, three, one of the

conspirators committed at least one overt act in an effort to

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advance the goal or object of the conspiracy.

If you find from your consideration of all the

evidence that the government has proved each of these elements

beyond a reasonable doubt for the charge you are considering,

then you should find that defendant guilty. If, on the other

hand, you find from your consideration of all the evidence that

the government has failed to prove any one of these elements

beyond a reasonable doubt for the charge you are considering,

then you should find the defendant not guilty.

A conspiracy is an expressed or implied agreement

between two or more persons to commit a crime. A conspiracy

may be proved even if its goal was not accomplished. In

deciding whether the charged conspiracy existed, you may

consider all the circumstances, including the words and acts of

each of the alleged participants.

To be a member of a conspiracy, a defendant must

have reached an agreement or understanding with at least one

other person in the conspiracy. For the purpose of becoming a

member of a conspiracy, a person does not need to join it at

the beginning. Likewise, a person may join in an agreement or

understanding without knowing all the details of the agreement

or understanding and without knowing who all the other members

are.

Further, it is not necessary that a person agree to

play any particular part in carrying out the agreement or

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understanding. A person may become a member of a conspiracy

even if that person agrees to play only a minor part in the

conspiracy as long as that person has an understanding of the

unlawful nature of the plan and voluntarily and intentionally

joins in it.

The conspiracy must include at least one member

other than the defendant who, at the time, was not a government

agent or informant. In deciding whether a particular defendant

joined the charged conspiracy, you must base your decision only

on what the defendant did or said. To determine what the

defendant did or said, you may consider the defendant's own

words or acts. You may also use the words or acts of other

persons to help you decide what the defendant did or said.

An overt act is any act done to carry out the goal

or object of the conspiracy. The overt act may, itself, be a

lawful act.

The crime of conspiracy to commit wire fraud is

different from the crime of wire fraud. However, to help you

decide whether the defendant conspired to commit wire fraud as

charged in Count 1 of the Indictment, you should consider the

elements of the crime of wire fraud.

One, a person knowingly devised or participated in a

scheme to defraud; and, two, he or she did so with the intent

to defraud; and, three, the scheme to defraud involved a

materially false or fraudulent pretense, representation, or

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promise; and, four, that for the purpose of carrying out the

scheme or attempting to do so, the person caused interstate

wire communications to take place.

You should consider these elements in determining

whether a defendant conspired to commit wire fraud, keeping in

mind that this count of the Indictment charges only a

conspiracy to commit the crime. It does not charge the

defendant with the crime of wire fraud.

A scheme is a plan or course of action formed with

the intent to accomplish some purpose. As to wire fraud, a

scheme to defraud is a scheme that is intended to deceive or

cheat another and to obtain money or property or cause the loss

of money or property to another by means of materially false or

fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises.

The crime of conspiring to commit honest services

wire fraud is different from the crime of honest services wire

fraud. However, to help you decide whether a defendant

conspired to commit honest services wire fraud as charged in

Count 6 of the Indictment, you should consider each of the

elements of the crime of honest services wire fraud:

One, a person knowingly devised or participated in a

scheme to defraud; and, two, he or she did so with the intent

to defraud; and, three, the scheme to defraud involved a

materially false or fraudulent pretense, representation, or

promise; and, four, that for the purpose of carrying out the

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scheme or attempting to do so, the person caused interstate

wire communications to take place.

You should consider these elements in determining

whether a defendant conspired to commit honest services wire

fraud keeping in mind that this count of the Indictment charges

only a conspiracy to commit the crime and does not charge the

defendant with the crime of honest services wire fraud.

A fiduciary duty is a duty to act only for the

benefit of the public. Public officials owe a fiduciary duty

to the public. As to honest services wire fraud, the alleged

scheme is to violate a fiduciary duty owed by the public

official to the public by receiving kickbacks for private gain.

A defendant need not owe the fiduciary duty personally in order

to violate the honest services wire fraud statute so long as he

or she devises or participates in a kickback scheme intended to

deprive the public of its right to a fiduciary's honest

services.

Kickbacks involve the exchange of a thing of value

for official action by a public official; in other words, a

quid pro quo, a Latin phrase meaning this for that. The public

official and the payer need not state the quid pro quo

agreement in express terms. It does not matter whether or not

the payer actually provides the thing of value and whether or

not the public official performed the requested official action

or intends to do so. A kickback occurs when a public official

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demands, solicits, or seeks or asks for directly or indirectly

something of value from another person in exchange for being

induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the

official duty and the act itself provides a source of the funds

to be kicked back.

In other words, a kickback is a form of bribery

where the government official's action is a source of the funds

to be paid to the public official.

The term "official act" means any decision or action

on a specific matter involving the formal exercise of

governmental power. In this case, the government has alleged

that specific matter is, one, retaining or not laying off

employees or, two, favorable treatment in job duties and

responsibilities. An official act can include making a

decision or taking an action or agreeing to do so on one or

both of these specific matters.

You must find that the public official made a

decision or took an action or agreed to do so on one or both of

these specific matters. The public official's decision or

action may include using his or her official position to exert

pressure on another official to perform an official act. It

may also include advising another official, knowing or

intending that such advice will form the basis for an official

act by the other official.

But, for example, merely arranging a meeting,

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hosting an event, or talking to another official to discuss a

matter without more --

MS. LERNER: Your Honor --

THE COURT: -- does not qualify as making a decision

or taking an action on that matter.

MS. LERNER: May we approach quickly, Your Honor?

THE COURT: Yes.

(Bench conference.)

MS. LERNER: The second sentence of the second

paragraph was supposed to be out. The second sentence of the

second paragraph was supposed to be out. They don't have to

find that.

MR. ZANZI: It was something we discussed yesterday,

Your Honor. I don't know how it made it back into the

instructions. We had a lengthy discussion on this.

THE COURT: What line?

MS. LERNER: It's the second sentence. I think

that's why we missed it, because it had been the first sentence

and --

THE COURT: So what specific thing?

MS. LERNER: Where it begins, "you must find..."

THE COURT: Where it says, "You must find that the

public official made a decision or took an action or agreed to

do so on one or both of these specific matters"?

MS. LERNER: I think it got moved.

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THE COURT: Is that what you're talking about?

MS. LERNER: Yeah.

MS. GAMBINO: I thought the objection was the first

sentence that was --

MS. LERNER: This was the first sentence before.

Now, it's the second sentence instead of coming out.

THE COURT: I just read what's in front of me.

MS. GAMBINO: I have to look at my proposed

instructions because I thought it was the first sentence that

was an issue.

(Discussion off the record between the Court and

Ms. Kwait.)

THE COURT: Julia says Maria is correct, that the

second sentence was to replace -- one of them was taken out.

And, again, this went through some various gyrations. But,

anyway, Julia is telling me that the sentence should not have

been in there.

MS. GAMBINO: All right. Well, rather than -- I

would just cross it out and reread it without that.

THE COURT: That's what I was going to do.

MR. ZANZI: That's fine.

THE COURT: Do the parties agree on that?

MS. LERNER: That's fine.

MS. GAMBINO: If that's what happened, then yes.

MR. ROGERS: Yes.

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THE COURT: All right. I'm just saying, do you

agree?

MR. ZANZI: We agree, Your Honor. If you want to

give a clean copy back to the jury, that's fine.

THE COURT: We'll send a clean copy back to the

jury. That, we will do.

What I'll do is read -- it's going to read, "The

official act can include making a decision or taking any action

or agreeing to do so," and then it goes to, "A public

official's decision or action may include using his or her

official position." That sentence is taken out. Does

everybody agree to that?

MR. ZANZI: Yes.

MR. ROGERS: Yes.

MS. GAMBINO: Yes.

THE COURT: I'm not going to apologize because I

read what's in front of me.

MS. LERNER: There's no need.

MR. ZANZI: No need to apologize.

THE COURT: Okay. All right.

(End of bench conference.)

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, without getting

much into it, instructions go through a process of things being

put in, taken out, put in, taken out, changed. Sometimes they

get back in again. In this case, a sentence got back in that

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had been taken out with the agreement of all the parties. So

let me read Instruction No. 37 to you again, and you'll get a

corrected copy back in the jury room. And I apologize.

The term "official act" means any decision or action

on a specific matter involving the formal exercise of

government power. In this case, the government has alleged

that the specific matter is, one, retaining or not laying off

employees or, two, favorable treatment in job duties and

responsibilities.

An official act can include making a decision or

taking an action, or agreeing to do so, on one or both of these

specific matters. The public official's decision or action may

include using his or her official position -- his or her

official position to exert pressure on another official to

perform an official act. It may also include advising another

official, knowing or intending that such advice will form the

basis for an official act by the other official.

But, for example, merely arranging a meeting,

hosting an event, or talking to another official to discuss a

matter without more does not qualify as making a decision or

taking an action on the matter.

As to both wire fraud and honest services wire

fraud, a materially false or fraudulent pretense,

representation, or promise may be accomplished by an omission

or the concealment of material information.

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As to wire fraud, a person acts with intent to

defraud if he or she acts knowingly with the intent to deceive

or cheat the victim or victims in order to cause a gain of

money or property to himself, herself, or another, or the

potential loss of money or property to another.

As to honest services wire fraud, a person acts with

intent to defraud if he acts knowingly with the intent to

deceive or cheat the victim or victims in order to deprive

another of the intangible right of honest services.

If the defendant acted in good faith, then he or she

lacked the intent to join a conspiracy. A defendant does not

have to prove his good faith.

A person acts knowingly if he or she realizes what

he or she is doing and is aware of the nature of his conduct

and does not act through ignorance, mistake, or accident. In

deciding whether a defendant acted knowingly, you may consider

all of the evidence including what a defendant did or said.

Ghost payrolling is not charged in this case.

Evidence was presented regarding the Calumet Township Trustee's

Office employee handbook. You may consider such evidence to

the extent you find it sheds light on questions of knowledge,

willfulness, and intent to defraud; but violations of the

policies of the employee handbook should not be considered as

implying a violation of federal law. You may not convict the

defendant of any of the counts alleging that he or she engaged

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in a conspiracy to commit a scheme to defraud simply on the

basis of the conclusions that they may have violated the

policies of the employee handbook.

Evidence was presented regarding the activities of

several persons who are not on trial before you in this case.

You should not speculate as to why any other person or persons

are not currently on trial before you.

Now, in their closing arguments, the attorneys will

tell you what they think the evidence shows. Again, what they

say is not evidence, and you will disregard what they say

unless it is supported by evidence. The government counsel

will begin, followed by defendants' counsel, followed by a

brief rebuttal from government's counsel.

Counsel for the government may proceed.

MS. LERNER: Thank you, Your Honor. Can everyone

hear me okay?

(The jury collectively responded.)

CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT

MS. LERNER: So when we began this case, we told you

it was a case about government waste and accountability. It

was a -- when you're a public official, you don't get to use

your office to benefit yourself. You don't get to use your

office as your campaign headquarters. You don't get to use the

public employees that are paid by taxpayer money to raise money

for your own personal fundraisers.

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And everyone involved in the conspiracy that you've

heard about and that I'll talk to you about in my closing, they

knew that this was wrong, and they did it anyway. They

betrayed the duty that they owed to the public. They betrayed

the public trust. They betrayed the public by not doing the

work that they you were supposed to do for the public.

The mission of the Calumet Township Trustee's Office

was to serve the poor, and you heard testimony that it offered

a lot of services such as helping people with their rent

payments or mortgage payments, helping with electrical bills,

helping women and children with temporary shelter in the

building in the multipurpose center. It served a lot of needs,

helping people find jobs when they needed jobs. That was what

the township trustee's office was intended to do, and that's

not what happened here.

Now, before I begin going into the elements, I want

to make one thing clear. This case is not about Ms. Shelton's

character or Mr. Wheeler's character. I don't think you heard

any evidence that maligned their character in this trial, and

most of the witnesses, including the government's witnesses,

said that they liked those two. This case is about their

conduct. This case is about accountability. As

Bishop Hairston told you, good people can do bad things. And

when they do bad things, they have to be held accountable, and

that's what this case is about.

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The other thing I wanted to let you know is that

you've heard jury instructions that are kind of -- they don't

necessarily -- they're not necessarily in an order that makes

sense. And you've heard testimony and evidence not in an order

that makes sense. I know that is frustrating and,

unfortunately, that's how the system works. I'm going to do my

best to show you what the elements are and how the government

has proven each and every one of them through the evidence and

the testimony and the evidence that has been admitted here at

trial.

So you've seen this picture a lot, and you've heard

testimony about the people in it. Just to reiterate, that's

Mary Elgin. And this is a conspiracy that we're talking about,

and people in a conspiracy play different roles. And

Mary Elgin was the head of this particular conspiracy. Not

every -- conspiracies can't have more than one boss. Not

everyone can be the boss in a conspiracy, so Ms. Elgin took the

leading role in this conspiracy.

She hired in the trustee's office people that she

trusted, her close friends and her family. And this is

Donna Frazier, her niece, who held a very high-level position

at the trustee's office.

This is Lendell Smith, which some people told you

they didn't know what he did, but they did know that he was

hired at the trustee's office to help with the campaign. And

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this is the person that you heard Warrien Poole say he barged

into a meeting in the IT department, a meeting in progress, and

said, "I'm on break." And I think Mr. Poole said it just like

that (indicating). He put his fingers up and then started

talking about the campaign with Mr. Hunter, and the people in

the meeting are having to wait for this campaign discussion to

finish.

This is Mr. Harris that you've heard has been also a

longtime associate of Ms. Elgin helping with her campaign. He

headed one of the departments at the township.

You heard from Mr. Taylor. He was one of the two

campaign managers for Mary Elgin. He testified to you at

length about what was going on at the trustee's office. He

told you, for example, that he knew Ethel Shelton from the

beginning of the first campaign, and he understood that

Ethel Shelton was a close or good friend of Mary Elgin.

Now, what motive does he have to lie to you about

that? It's inconsistent with what Ms. Shelton told you, but

Mr. Taylor testified that he met Ms. Shelton during the first

election; that Ms. Shelton was a good friend of Mary Elgin.

She brought political experience to the table. She knew

something about political campaigning. She was a big

contributor to the campaign. She was a key member of EPIC.

She was a valuable contributor, and she brought her own ideas.

Mr. Taylor told you that the folks in the picture,

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they considered every employee at the township to be part of

EPIC. In other words, they conflated the township with their

political campaign. These were all members that were active

from the beginning; and they blended -- as Mr. Taylor

testified, they blended political discussions with their

deputies' meetings with the work that they were supposed to be

doing.

And you heard that too also from

Cynthia Holman-Upshaw, who told you that closer to the

fundraisers, they would start talking about planning the

fundraisers at the deputies' meetings, the political

fundraisers.

This is Ethel Shelton, who you've heard a lot about

and you've heard from. She testified, of course. She was

Mary Elgin's best friend. And whether or not they've had a

falling out, whether or not things turned out the way that

Ms. Shelton wanted them to in the end, she was Mary Elgin's

best friend, and she supported her, and Mary trusted her. And

you'll see that through the evidence and the testimony.

And this is Alex Wheeler, her longtime campaign

manager. He was with her from the very beginning. She made

him a deputy, and he was always there, an active supporter in

the EPIC meetings.

You also heard about a couple of other people not in

this picture. Stafford Garbutt was part of this conspiracy.

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He eventually went to the FBI, but he was part of this

conspiracy in the beginning, and he was doing the exact same

things. He admitted that to you.

Steven Hunter, who is Ms. Elgin's son, who, as far

as anyone can tell, his only qualification for the job he had

was that his mommy was the trustee, he was also part of the

conspiracy. And, again, each of these people played a

different role.

Ethel Shelton, for example, put the tickets

together, collected the money. Alex Wheeler distributed them

to his own people. They helped Mary Elgin during the campaign

work. They helped planning with the fundraising.

And this is really what it was all about. And these

are things that are all in the evidence. The boxes of evidence

that are in front of the court reporter's desk here, that's the

label that you see on there, Government Exhibits 31, 31 and 21,

this was all kept at the trustee's office. Because that's

where they used it. They were using their position -- they

were using their positions at the trustee's office to keep

themselves in power, to keep their jobs, and to keep Mary Elgin

in power, and not just Mary Elgin, but also to support their

own campaigns.

Why did they do this? Well, not only were they

close to Mary Elgin and they wanted to support her, but they

wanted to keep the jobs that they had. They did so much

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political work at this job that it must not have been a very

demanding job for them to be able to do that. In addition,

they wanted Mary Elgin's support for their own campaigns.

And you heard that there was talk about whether or

not she gave them the support that they had hoped for, and they

had fallings out. But they wanted that support, they hoped for

that support, they expected that support, and that's why they

were with her.

So there are two conspiracies that are charged. One

is wire fraud, and one is honest services wire fraud. The wire

fraud conspiracy -- and you may remember this slide from the

beginning -- it's a scheme to defraud Calumet Township of money

or property. And the purpose is to serve the personal and

political interests of those in the conspiracy. And the way

that they did it was using township resources to work on they

personal political campaign, and that includes using the space,

using the employees, using their own time, and the other ways

that I'll get into in a moment.

The other conspiracy is honest services fraud, and

this is a little bit different, even though the evidence is

very similar. It's to defraud Calumet Township of the honest

services of its elected official, and that's Mary Elgin. She

was the trustee at the time. And the purpose of it is to

enrich her political campaign. And the way they did it was to

get employees to buy campaign tickets in order to secure their

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jobs.

Now, there 's a lot of people that you didn't hear

from, the victims, which are the citizens of Calumet Township,

the ones who were basically against their will contributing to

Mary Elgin's political campaign. They should have been doing

work in this building and doing their campaign work at their

campaign headquarters, but that's not what they were doing.

And the citizens of Calumet Township are not the

only ones who suffered because for every minute that one of

these folks in the conspiracy or someone else that worked at

the township that they got to help them do these campaign

fundraisers and planning, every time someone spent one less

minute doing work that was supposed to be done at the township,

the folks that were served by the township suffered for it.

That's one less minute of work that was spent towards helping

those that were supposed to be helped by the township.

And these folks suffered too. These are the folks

that you heard from. You heard from Gladys Miller who survived

three administrations, and she told you how she dutifully

bought her tickets every year. And one time, one time, she

couldn't afford to buy tickets because she had to pay $60 for

her son's band practice, and what happened? She got a call

from Ms. Shelton saying, "Do you want to go see the trustee?

Do you want to go see Mary Elgin?

And Ms. Miller said, "No, I don't. I don't want to

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go see the trustee. I can't afford the tickets this time."

And she kept pressing and pressing and pressing until

Ms. Miller finally said, "I'm going to hang up the phone now,"

and she did. She bought her tickets every time after that, but

she stopped going to the event.

You heard from Horace Clay who told you that he

wasn't worried about his job because he was on a payment plan,

and he was on a payment plan because Ms. Shelton told him about

it and put him on it. And you saw some of the envelopes that

were in Mary Elgin's office that held the $11 per workweek that

he contributed from his $22,000 a year salary. Did you hear

anyone cutting him a break on how many of those $100 tickets he

would have to buy? Did you hear anyone cutting him a break or

giving him a discount on those tickets? Nope. No break for

him. He just had to be on a payment plan.

You heard from Cynthia Holman-Upshaw, who enjoyed

going to the events and she had no problem with it, but she

also told you that she understood it was expected of her, and

so she bought her tickets.

You heard from Elena Lynch, who told you that she

was shocked when she was told that she had to buy tickets to

fundraisers at work. She refused to do it, and she was fired.

You heard from Warrien Poole that Steven Hunter told him she

was fired for not buying tickets.

You heard from Debra Piggee who, again, struggled to

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buy the tickets but did so because she believed it was expected

of her and she needed to. She also had to pay an installment

because she couldn't make the payments all at once, but she did

do it because she wanted to keep her job.

You heard from Linda Collins-Brown who, again,

dutifully brought her tickets and even enjoyed going to the

fundraisers, but there was one time when she struggled to make

a payment. She made a donation instead, instead of buying a

ticket, and she heard from Ethel Shelton about why you can't

return those tickets. You're going to have to eat them. And

she had to listen to this call in the middle of talking to a

client.

And that's exactly the example I was talking about.

Instead of allowing Ms. Collins-Brown to work on what she was

supposed to be doing with the clients of the township, she had

to listen to a call from Ethel Shelton about, "You can't return

those tickets, and you're going to have to eat them."

You heard from John Davis who, if you recall, he's

the one that had a criminal record and it was really difficult

for him to find a job. He was very grateful that he was able

to get a part-time job at the township in the IT department.

And knowing that he wasn't going to be able to pay much, if

any, money on those tickets, he did whatever he could to help

the campaign in other ways. For example, you heard that he

spent a substantial amount of time helping Ethel Shelton with a

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political mailing, almost a week's worth of time total that he

spent.

And you heard from Warrien Poole, again, from the IT

department, as with all of these employees, whether they felt

pressured or not, they knew they were expected to buy the

tickets. And nobody's arguing that they were forced to buy the

tickets. These -- the tickets were bought voluntarily. And

that question goes more toward the honest services fraud, which

I will explain in a little bit.

No one is arguing that these were bought forcefully.

They were bought voluntarily, but they were bought because they

believed that if they didn't do that, they were at risk of

getting on the layoff list, and they wanted to protect their

jobs.

So both counts in this trial are conspiracy. And

here's where it's going to get a little confusing, but

hopefully I can talk you through it in a way that makes sense.

The first element is that -- and these three

elements that I'm going to give you, these three elements the

government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

The first element is that there was a conspiracy as

charged, and it was expressed or implied, and there has to be

at least two people. And you remember that picture that we

keep putting up. Few people say, "Hey, let's go conspire to

rob a bank," or write it down or that sort of thing. So

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conspiracies, in order to figure out whether one exists, you

have to use inferences. And this is one of the instructions

that the judge read you.

People sometimes look at one fact and conclude from

it that another fact exists. This is called an inference. You

are allowed to make reasonable inferences so long as they are

based on the evidence.

So when you see people meeting at a campaign meeting

and then talking about how they are going to figure out ways to

get the employees to buy more tickets and they're frustrated

that they have no leverage over the employees to get them to

buy more tickets, that's evidence you can make an inference

that these people are in a conspiracy.

The second element is that the defendants,

Ms. Shelton and Mr. Wheeler, knowingly became members of the

conspiracy so they could advance it. They had to join that

conspiracy. They had to understand the purpose of it, and they

had to want to make it happen, make it work. The goals of the

conspiracy don't have to be accomplished, but they have to be

embraced and understood and wanted to move forward.

Finally, someone in the conspiracy has to commit an

overt act, some action to advance the goal in the conspiracy.

Saying, "Hey, let's go rob a bank," is not enough to make a

conspiracy. You actually have to do something about it. And

that action doesn't have to be illegal. It can be any kind of

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action, as long as it's done for the purpose of carrying out

the conspiracy.

And a few additional things to keep in mind about

conspiracy is that people can join a conspiracy without knowing

all of the details of the agreement. A person doesn't have to

play any particular role in carrying out the conspiracy, and,

again, recall that I was talking about how folks in a

conspiracy have different roles in the conspiracy.

Someone can be found guilty of a conspiracy even if

they only played a minor role as long as they understood the

unlawful nature of the plan and they voluntarily and

intentionally joined in the agreement. And that's what the

government has to prove.

So you may have -- this is part -- I'm going to put

up part of jury instruction number 5. You may not have caught

it because there's a lot to that particular instruction and

sometimes things go fast. But I like to remind juries that you

need to use your common sense. That's what you bring here

that's valuable. Because you can talk about evidence, you can

talk about the law, you can talk about testimony, but if you're

not evaluating it with your common sense, you're not really

bringing to the table what your value is.

You need to consider the evidence in light of your

own, everyday experience. So as you're considering whether

someone is telling the truth or whether they're not telling the

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truth, consider that in light of your own, everyday experience.

When you're thinking about whether someone has something on

their computer or in their desk and for what purpose would they

keep it there, consider that. Use your common sense. Consider

that in light of your own, everyday experience.

So going back to the three elements the government

has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, the first is that there

is a conspiracy between two or more people. And, again, this

is Mary Elgin's inner circle, but it has to be not just any

conspiracy, but a conspiracy as charged. So the first count is

actually conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and here's where I'm

going to try to do my best not to confuse things.

I'm going to give you the elements of wire fraud.

The government doesn't have to prove these beyond a reasonable

doubt. We have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that that's

what the conspiracy was but not that each and every one of

these elements occurred beyond a reasonable doubt.

So the first one is scheme to defraud, and I'll

define these in a second. There is intent to defraud, there is

materially false representation or pretense, and an interstate

wire in furtherance of. So starting with a scheme to defraud,

a scheme to defraud is pretty basic. It's a plan or course of

action formed with the intent to accomplish some purpose.

In this case, specifically, it's to obtain money or

property of the township by using the time, resources, and

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employees of the township in order to further their own

personal and political interests rather than benefitting the

citizens of the township. That is a scheme to defraud here.

So you saw the check on Ethel Shelton's desk for the

campaign headquarters, and it was dated the end of January.

And if you recall, the search warrant that got all of this

evidence was six to eight weeks later, and this was found at

the Calumet Township Trustee's office, not at the headquarters.

They kept it at the trustee's office even after opening their

headquarters. And why not? Why wouldn't you keep things you

need where you use them?

They were so used to running their campaign out of

the trustee's office, why change things? Why move? You had to

leave the office and go somewhere else to go to the campaign

headquarters. Why do that when you could just do the work at

work? They had volunteers, also called employees, who could do

the work for them there. This is the way they had done it for

12 years. They weren't going to change.

The second element of wire fraud is intent to

defraud. And basically someone acts knowingly with the intent

to deceive or cheat a victim in order -- and in this case,

remember, the victim is the Calumet Township -- in order to

cause a gain of money or property to the defendants or another

or a loss of money. And, here, that's what we're talking

about: Loss of money, loss of time, the employees' time, the

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defendants' time, the other coconspirators' time, the resources

of the Calumet Township. All of that's lost, and it can be for

the defendant or another. It doesn't have to be Ms. Shelton

and Mr. Wheeler doing this. It could be another or both of

them or all of them.

So what evidence do we have? What evidence have we

seen of a scheme to defraud? So some of this you're going to

see for the first time because we haven't pulled out everything

in the boxes, so I'm going to slow down when we get to

something new to you. But we've seen and heard testimony about

distribution of tickets to employees at the township office.

We've seen and heard testimony about collecting money at the

township office. We've seen and heard testimony about sending

mailings from the township office.

We've heard testimony about people spending their

work hours at the township office running campaigns, attending

political meetings at the township office, using township

employees to plan and organize political fundraisers, using the

township office to run their own campaigns, and using computers

and printers at the township office.

So as far as the testimony is concerned on the

distribution of tickets and collecting of money, we have

Mr. Garbutt who told you that he saw Ethel putting together the

tickets and distributing them to the deputies.

We have Gladys Miller who told you that she

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dutifully bought her tickets every year. She was given tickets

one year by Ethel Shelton to distribute to her own

subordinates. This was done at work.

And as you're thinking about the testimony of these

employees, ask yourself if you're getting a ticket from your

boss and your boss is saying, "I really want you to support my

campaign." He gives you a ticket three times a year. You're

an at-will employee. You're not in a union. You could get

fired at any time for any reason. Are you going to buy that

ticket? Well, maybe, maybe not. It's still your choice. But

you kind of feel pressured to do that, don't you? You kind of

feel like maybe I need to do that to make sure I'm in the

boss's good graces so if there are layoffs, I'm not on the

list.

Lamar Taylor told you and acknowledged that's what

the whole system -- how it was structured. He distributed the

tickets he received from Ethel Shelton. Linda Collins-Brown

told you how she received tickets from Mr. Wheeler and how the

one time she had trouble paying for her tickets, she got

bullied by Ethel Shelton about it and said, "You have to eat

those tickets. You can't return them."

Elena Lynch didn't buy the tickets, got fired. A

lot of people noticed that. Cynthia Holman-Upshaw, again,

given tickets to distribute by Ethel Shelton and she did so.

And she told you she -- if you recall, she told you she was

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perfectly happy going to those fundraiser. She enjoyed them.

She thought they were social events, but she acknowledged they

were also a fundraiser. But she did also tell you that she

felt she was expected to buy those tickets.

And Debra Piggee, who told you that she struggled

sometimes to buy tickets and had to get on installment plans,

but she too understood that you had to buy those tickets.

And, finally, Warrien Poole told you the same thing.

He wasn't as worried about his job because his boss,

Steven Hunter, didn't know his job very well, so Warrien Poole

kind of had some job security of his own. But he said he still

felt expected to buy those tickets.

Now, you've heard this before. I'll play just a

little bit of it again.

(Audio played.)

MS. LERNER: So yesterday Ethel Shelton told you

that if she knew it was illegal, she wouldn't have done it.

But when she didn't know you were going to be listening in,

that's what she said: "I know what you can do and what is

legal and what is not legal." That is not consistent with what

she told you yesterday, is it?

And Mr. Wheeler, he responded, "I'm going to give

you 100 percent and make sure they give you, my employees, they

give you 100 percent." He was committing to get his employees

to buy the tickets.

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Here's more evidence of ticket distribution and

money collection. This is from Mary Elgin's office, and I

showed you a little bit of it yesterday. These are employees.

And they also keep track, again, of who's not buying tickets

because that's important for when you're making a layoff list,

I guess. They keep track of these things for a long time, and

they are broken out by section.

This is just Mr. Wheeler's section, but Mr. Harris

has a section, and the other deputies all have sections where

their employees are listed and whether or not they've paid and

how much they've paid is listed. And there's a lot of these.

Tickets are there as well. This is all from Mary Elgin's

office.

Also from her office, the ones that we talked about

the other day with Horace Clay, there's a lot of them. He was

paying dutifully. He told you he was not worried about his job

because he was on a payment plan. Those were his words. He

paid every time. The only time he didn't is when he was sick

and he couldn't work.

And let me just make a quick point. Here when

Mr. Wheeler says, "I'm going to give you 100 percent and make

sure they give you 100 percent," you may recall Mr. Rogers in

his opening statement told you that Mr. Wheeler told his

employees they don't have to buy tickets and it's unfair and

improper to make his employees buy the $100 tickets. Does that

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sound like that's what he thinks?

Another piece of evidence that we've heard a lot

about, about ticket distribution and money collection, this is

when Gladys Miller was given tickets by Ethel Shelton, and

you'll recall she testified that she got those tickets at the

north annex. And she got them from Ethel Shelton when

Ethel Shelton made the comment, "I'm not going to jail for

anybody." Again, does this sound like someone who doesn't know

the law?

So Gladys Miller's thinking, "I'm getting tickets at

work; I need to make a receipt," because she's a finance

person, so she uses her work computer to create a receipt. And

she's sent back an e-mail, or a note, from Ethel that says,

"Gladys, we are not to use government computers to record

political donations. Please do not record any information

concerning anything political on work computers." Is this

consistent with what she did herself? Is this consistent with

her testimony?

Mailings. You've heard a couple of recordings that

talked about mailings being done at the township trustee's

office. Now, Ms. Shelton told you that she did them all at

home, assembly line with the family, but we have testimony from

Mr. Davis that he had to do a mail merge that took him about

40 hours because Ms. Shelton wasn't exactly sure how to work

the mail merge function at work. This was done at the

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township. It was a political mailing.

In this recording Stafford is telling her, "Aren't

you tired of these tickets?"

And Ms. Shelton says, "I have sent out plenty of

them." And then later on Ms. Shelton says, "Did you know Mary

sent tickets?"

Now, here she's talking with Teresa Hamblin, who is

in maintenance and who helped Ms. Shelton do the mailings. As

you see the discussion, they're talking about, "How many did

you give them? Two. I got them. 879, 88 -- I haven't gotten

that yet. You were looking for -- "

And then Stafford says, "I didn't mean to throw you

guys off."

And then Ms. Shelton says, "874, 78, 79." They're

counting tickets. They're counting ticket numbers because

these tickets have ticket numbers, and they're putting a

mailing together. This was done at 9:47 a.m. on October 16,

2013. And the recording was only ten minutes long, so I'm sure

that the excuse will be, "I was on break." And you have to ask

yourselves, that's been used a lot.

First of all, if you don't know what you're doing is

illegal, why do you need to keep saying, "I'm on break." What

difference does it make? If it's legal, you don't need to do

it on break. You can do it during regular time. You know it's

illegal. That's why you're doing it on break or at lunch.

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And Ms. Shelton said, "I have sent out plenty of

them," and they're in the 800s. Do you think she only started

this at -- you know, took a ten-minute break to do ten of these

and then took the rest home? That's not what the testimony

says.

She was doing her own mailings for her own campaign,

and, again, here, Mr. Garbutt says, "Are you finishing up the

Griffith people, the precinct people?" Now, you'll recall

Ms. Shelton was a precinct committeewoman. She says, "I'm done

with that. This is my stuff. I'm sending it to the churches."

Later on in that same recording she says, "I'm done. I've got

some stamps left." 3:10 p.m., February 6, 2014.

A lot of the recordings contain political

discussions. And some of you might think, "Well, sure,

everybody talks about politics in the break room." But listen

carefully to them before you make that conclusion because these

are the conversations between two people, Ms. Shelton and

Mr. Garbutt, who are very familiar with local politics, and

they're discussing strategy for Mary Elgin's campaign and her

own campaign: Who she's going to send out tickets to, who

she's going to ask for her support, who she's going to ask for

political donations. You probably recognized one or two of the

names mentioned in there. They're other political figures in

this area.

These are not casual conversations about what

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politician did what on her Tweeter account. These are

politicians [verbatim] about political strategy, and they're

held everywhere throughout the trustee's office.

How does that serve the clients of the township?

How does that serve the poor? They kept these prepaid

envelopes for EPIC at the township. Where do you keep the

envelopes that you need? You keep them where you're going to

use them, right? You keep them at the office, if that's where

you're going to use them. Here are some of the mailings that

they sent out, including Ms. Shelton's own mailing.

Where do you keep letterhead that you're going to

use? You keep it in the location where you plan to use it, and

if you're using it at the office, you keep it at the office.

They spent a lot of time doing political work, political

meetings on township time. There are two -- there was a lot of

discussion about these two meetings and this one in particular

because it was a longer meeting. And this was held at the

north annex, if you recall.

This was another EPIC meeting. Let's take a look at

that. First of all, let me -- before I even go to the next

slide, are you allowed to do your campaign work at the

trustee's office just because you say you're on break or you're

on -- you're at lunch? You're not. As I'll show you in the

handout, the employee handbook, the work that's supposed to be

done at the trustee's office is only intended to serve the

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clients of the trustee's office.

So there was a meeting here that's highlighted on

September 26, 2013. This is at noon, and it goes on for two

and a half hours, and, as you recall, it was at the north

annex. And this is Ms. Shelton's time sheet. She knows she's

supposed to keep accurate time sheets because she signs that

every week. And on that day, on September 26, she signed in at

8:00 and signed out of 4:00, and she did not put in an hour and

a half for personal business.

Let's assume that out of that two and a half hour

meeting, one of those hours was for lunch hour. What did she

do with that extra hour and a half? Why is it not indicated on

the time sheet as personal business? Again, this is at 12:07,

and it ended two and a half hours later. She knew -- this is a

different date. She knew how to record her time for personal

business. It's not like she didn't know. She just didn't do

it, probably because she didn't consider it any differently

than her regular work.

This is Alex Wheeler, same day. He's very careful

with making sure that he records exactly what time he comes in,

9:15 a.m. and he leaves at 6:00. And he, too, does not record

anything about taking that extra hour and a half to do personal

campaign work. And, in fact, he records his time as 45 minutes

more that week.

Here's the other meeting, the other EPIC meeting at

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the annex. Mr. Wheeler recorded that he came in at 9:15 that

day, recorded that he left at 5:30 that day, and recorded .23,

23 minutes of compensation time that week. This is when he was

in that long meeting that started right around 4:00 o'clock.

So he got paid by the citizens of Calumet Township for sitting

in a political meeting. And not only that, but he asked for

comp time on top of that.

You've heard testimony from Lamar Taylor talking

about how there were regular meetings at the north annex, one

of the township's buildings, for EPIC. And they concerned

political matters regarding -- political matters and campaign

matters. You heard there were some political matters discussed

during the deputies' meetings. There was a comingling. They

didn't keep it separate.

You heard Mr. Garbutt tell you the same thing; they

discussed political matters at the trustee's office, and the

recordings also show you that. You heard Cynthia Holman-Upshaw

tell you that during the deputies' meetings, especially when

they were getting closer to the fundraisers, they would start

talking about planning for the fundraisers. These were not

fundraisers for the trustee's office. These were fundraisers

for Mary Elgin and her campaign.

And the records of the north annex showed that they

only paid for renting that space three times, and this was

after the Van Til case, which is another public corruption

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case, discussed on the recordings became public.

So here's where they're discussing -- this is the

one in October, October the 3rd. It's Exhibit 4C and 4T.

Here's where they're discussing the tickets again. "You know,

we got to get the tickets out," Ms. Shelton says. "Are the

tickets coming Monday?" She's not sure. "I'm pretty sure I

can get them Monday."

Then Ms. Elgin talks about passing the tickets out,

and they talk about having a kickoff and there being an

opportunity to invite people. Ms. Elgin says, "No, it's just

the staff," and she insists it's just the staff. This is going

to be a kickoff for the employees to give them their tickets

basically.

And she says, "It'd be a good time for the tickets

on account -- can't nobody say we gave them to them at the

office, because we do give them to somebody in the office.

We'll just say we had a party and we passed them out." That's

evidence of a conspiracy.

They know what they're doing is wrong. They know

they can't do it at the office, so they're trying to find

another way to do it to get the tickets to the employees. It

goes on.

And she says here, "I want to caution you, we have

three candidates in the office now. Because this year and

right now, we're going through a season where everybody is

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recording everybody," and she wants everyone to be very careful

in their conversation and using their computers and their

conversations. Because, again, they know what they're doing is

wrong.

She says, "We're going to have a headquarters.

We're going to do our business. We're going to get quieter,

and don't tell them." Well, they did. This is October. They

got their headquarters several months later.

And she says, "It's going to be payback. We'd be

crazy to fall for some of this stuff. They'll get us in jail.

They're looking to get somebody in jail, and we have to be very

careful."

And then, again, same meeting she cautions them,

"Don't ask anyone to help you. Be very careful who you ask.

You might have to put a little extra energy, I guess, maybe not

using the employees and doing it themselves."

And here she says, "When you're outside the

building, the expectation of every employee that works here is

the same, but don't ask them here. If you want to talk to

someone, ask them to go to lunch and talk to them then. Talk

to them at lunch. Walk them to their car."

The expectation is the same. If you work there, you

were expected to buy her tickets. She knows she can't ask you

at work, so she's going to send her deputies out to chase the

employees in the parking lot, to take them to lunch to ask them

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about their tickets.

She says, "When you're outside the building, talk to

them. Don't have a conversation with them at their desk.

Don't insist that they do some stuff. Walk them outside and

ask them outside. And if don't nobody else hear you, you ain't

even ask them. It wasn't me."

And, again, these are exactly the kinds of

conversations that you can use to draw an inference about

whether a conspiracy exists and what the conspiracy was

intended to do. This is not the kind of conversation that

people have when they know they're doing things that are

perfectly legal.

Using township employees to plan and organize

fundraisers. This is for one of the prayer brunch, the women

of Elgin volunteer list, and there's a lot of them. And

there's also a no list. Why do you need to keep a no list?

Why do you need to know who doesn't want to participate in your

fundraiser?

Here's more volunteer lists, again, keeping track of

who isn't participating. Again, who isn't participating.

What's the purpose of a no list? It's to make sure

the employees know that if they don't buy the tickets, that

they could end up on that layoff list because Mary's watching.

She keeps track, and those that help her, help her keep track.

A lot of the employees enjoyed working on the decorating

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committee -- oops. I'm going backward -- and much of the work

they did was on the clock. You heard that they put the

decorations together at the trustee's office. They were stored

at the trustee's office. And then they were driven to the

Genesis Center by the maintenance staff. Again, using the

employees for their own political fundraisers. Using their

offices and the township office as their own campaign

headquarters.

So here is a check from EPIC to Mr. Visclosky. It

is a donation for the spring brunch. And you recall that

Ms. Elgin told you she sometimes signs Mary Elgin's name, and

you've probably seen her signature enough to notice that she's

got that distinctive "e."

Now, money is one of those funny things that can

break up marriages and break up friendships. It's a really

touchy subject. So the people that you trust with your money

are the people that are closest to you, right? And you've

heard testimony that Donna Frazier, Ms. Elgin's niece, there

were some allegations about some mismanagement of the EPIC

money. So who did Mary Elgin give that money to? She gave

that responsibility to her best friend, Ethel Shelton.

Ethel got to keep track of the cash that came in

from the tickets that the employees were getting. Ethel got to

keep track of the checkbooks. Ethel got to sign checks on

Mary's behalf because that's how much Mary trusted her. She

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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was Mary's right-hand person. She trusted her with her money.

This is a check for the Genesis Center. Here is the

letter that went out for the extravaganza showing Ethel was the

chairperson that year.

The same list that I showed you and some additional

ticket lists that were kept. Blank envelopes for EPIC, the

extravaganza. Ms. Elgin's campaign finance reports and

tickets.

Also in Mary Elgin's office, the Horace clay

envelopes and envelopes for other people, including some names

that you've heard of: Warrien Poole; John Davis;

Warrien Poole; Warrien Poole again; Alex Wheeler, the

defendant; James Leslie that you heard about; Lamar Taylor;

Johnnie Barbie. These are all in Mary Elgin's office. Why

does she need to keep track of all of that?

Election day volunteer sheets. Completed voter

registration application forms. And you might see some of

these things have blacked out information. That's my doing.

The originals won't have that when you take the evidence back

to look at it. Because this is being broadcast out there, I

didn't want the personal information of people who didn't want

to have their information in Mary Elgin's office to be

broadcast out there.

There was a stack of completed voter registration

forms in one of those boxes that's labelled Exhibit 20 in

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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Mary Elgin's office. EPIC bank statements and volunteer forms.

And with Ms. Shelton's desk -- again, Mary Elgin

trusts Ms. Shelton with her money. And that's why Ethel keeps

track of the cash and the checks.

Also, in Ethel Shelton's desk, tickets to the

extravaganza on the same or a different number of years and the

prayer brunch. Her own mailings. Her own letterhead. You

heard some testimony about this, especially from Ms. Piggee and

from the transcript that I read from a moment ago where they

were talking about having a kickoff so they could give the

tickets to the employees. Well, this is it. It occurred a few

weeks later on October the 23rd at 4:00 p.m. And you heard

Ms. Piggee got an invitation to this on her desk telling her to

go after work.

She wanted to go home. She wanted to do something

else. She didn't want to go to a rally, but she felt she had

to. She goes to the rally where she's told about the

extravaganza, and then she listens to Ethel Shelton discuss all

the details about the extravaganza and tell her what the

details are about where, when, the programs, the tickets, the

ad books. And then, as if that isn't enough just to be told

what's coming, then you've got to sit through EPIC trivia,

which is this (indicating).

You have to sit through EPIC trivia before you can

go home. You're asked: Who the president, vice president, and

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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treasurer for EPIC? How does that help the poor? Why are the

employees of the township being required to go to this meeting

to answer these question. Who are the two spinoff groups for

EPIC?

And there was a sign-in sheet. Ms. Piggee couldn't

remember, but it was there. She, in fact, signed in. She's

right there. As a matter of fact, a lot of people signed in.

There was a lot in attendance there. This was when the office

was already down to about 80 people, and 50 of them showed up.

That's high attendance for a rally after work.

Ms. Shelton's mailings and more mailings. This is

all in her desk, again, and letterhead from her time as a

precinct committee person. This, as you recall, I showed you

earlier where she's having her campaign literature sent to the

trustee's office.

She told you she does a lot of this stuff at home,

but that's not consistent with what's in her desk and what

she's having delivered there. Returned mail from EPIC, also in

Ethel Shelton's desk. Her own fundraising stuff. And there's

not a lot of this stuff, so she could have easily kept it in a

folder at home, but it was in her desk a work. This is for a

campaign advertisement from The Committee to Elect

Ethel Shelton. The letter that we talked about from

Gladys Miller. More checks. And, of course, the blank checks

which Mary Elgin trusted with Ethel Shelton.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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And, again, Ethel Shelton's office -- this is what's

kept in their office. They know they're not supposed to do

this, and this is what's in their office. This is an EPIC

Thanksgiving extravaganza ad book. You heard several witnesses

describe it. These are volunteer forms, and this is the EPIC

stamp and some more checks.

And then Mr. Wheeler's office: Ms. Shelton's

fundraiser speech from 2013. Some literature for fundraising.

Additional campaign literature when he's running for Calumet

Township board. This is some proofs for some buttons,

something of the sort, for when he was running for

councilman-at-large a few years back. Some proofs, again, for

that same office run, which are still in his office or were

still in his office, and literature, again, from that campaign

run and envelopes. More labels. Donations. This is why they

were doing what they were doing, because Mary Elgin supported

them in their own campaigns. Maybe not as much as they wanted

to, but she did.

And you saw some of the invoices that were up on the

screen the other day that had him using his township e-mail to

get the -- to get to his campaign literature. His campaign

finance reports. Declaration of candidacy. And, of course, a

ticket.

So there are, as you can see, six boxes that have

material that was campaign related over a 12-year period. I'm

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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not going to show you this. I'm going to try to read through

it very quickly because it's a long list. Tickets the

extravaganza, prayer brunch, and Mardi Gras; bank statements

for EPIC; programs for the prayer brunch; employee ticket lists

for multiple fundraisers and multiple years; campaign

literature, leaflets, palm cards, and flyers.

EPIC expenses and receipts filed by month and year;

records of checks received from campaign donors, including

employees, over multiple years; planning material for

fundraisers; the EPIC stamped envelopes that you saw a moment

ago; planning booklets; ad booklets; campaign finance reports;

campaign finance manuals; receipts for printing and costs;

letterhead that you saw earlier on an earlier slide; list of

poll workers; completed applications for absentee ballots and

voter registration forms. This is similar to what was in

Mary Elgin's office, again, with people's information already

on there.

Invitations to fundraisers; campaign mailings; logs

of ad purchases; vendor lists; mailing labels; donor lists;

collection letters.

And, again, remember, this is a collection letter.

There's a stack of these that Ms. Shelton sent out and signed.

This one went to Debra Piggee, one of the witnesses who said

that she sometimes struggled to pay for the full amount of the

tickets that she was given. Apparently she didn't pay quickly

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 72

enough, so she got a collect letter from Ethel Shelton.

And then we have the computers. And, again, these

are some of the things that are found on Mr. Wheeler's

computer, and Ms. Shelton's we already know about. The

fundraising letter, the speech, the things that her friend

designed and sent to her at work, her letterhead. This is the

design for her T-shirts. This is her speech for when she was

running for the Calumet board.

This is from Steven Hunter's computer, and I

apologize that it's a little fuzzy. It's in Exhibit 39, so you

can see the original in there, and it's a lot clearer.

Basically, this is an e-mail from Steven Hunter.

It's actually from a personal address, and it's regarding the

Elgin Eagles. And you'll recall that the Elgin Eagles were the

male organization that kind of spun off of EPIC that did the

Mardi Gras for Mary Elgin. And this was sent to Alex Wheeler

and to Ethel Shelton, and Steven Hunter sent it back to

himself. And this is all at their work address, at their

township e-mail address because, again, there was a complete

connection between everything they were doing from the campaign

and what they were doing at work, even though there shouldn't

have been.

Steven Hunter's computer had -- and this is another

e-mail. I'm sorry. This is another e-mail. Now, you recall

one of the recordings had -- was with Chuck Winer. This is the

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 73

one that had a long conversation about going on vacation in the

Caribbean in Mexico and you probably kind of --

THE COURT: Ms. Lerner, could we take a short break

here. Keep your break. The jurors have asked for a break.

MS. LERNER: Sure, we can do that.

THE COURT: Is the lunch here yet?

SECURITY OFFICER VELEZ: Yes.

THE COURT: What we'll will do is take a quick lunch

break. I'm talking about the same like we'd have our morning

break so 15 or 20 minutes, whatever it takes you to eat your

sandwich and so forth. You can take longer if you need it, but

we need to get back as soon as we can.

SECURITY OFFICER ROGALSKI: Bring the lunch

upstairs?

THE COURT: Yes.

Usual admonition -- and it's obviously more

important now. You're going to have this case shortly. Don't

talk to anybody -- you still can't talk to each other about the

case. You can't let anybody talk to you about the case. If

somebody tries to talk to you, let me know.

We'll take a recess, 15 to 20 minutes or whatever it

takes you to do whatever you have to do. Just let Carlos and

Lenny know when you're ready to come back in. We'll be in a

short recess.

(Jury out at 11:18 a.m.)

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 74

THE COURT: I apologize.

MS. LERNER: No worries.

THE COURT: It has been a long time, and so we'll

probably take one more break this afternoon maybe. We'll see

how long we can go. Anyway, stay close. As soon as they say

they're ready to come back in, I want to start up immediately

at that point.

MR. ROGERS: Judge, I was doing something else. I

didn't follow that. The jury is eating their lunch now.

THE COURT: They're going to have their lunch. This

is like a morning break, you know, 15 to 20 minutes. It will

probably be closer to 20 or a little bit longer because they're

eating lunch too. Anyway, that's what it is.

MR. ROGERS: Okay.

THE COURT: We'll be in recess until the jury is

ready to come back in.

(Recess had at 11:18 a.m., and proceedings resumed in open

court at 11:54 a.m.)

THE COURT: You can all be seated.

Government ready for the jury to be brought back in?

MS. LERNER: We are, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Defendants ready for the jury to be

brought in?

MS. GAMBINO: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. ROGERS: Yes, Your Honor.

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 75

THE COURT: Bring the jury in.

Are you keeping your own time, Ms. Lerner?

MR. ZANZI: We have been tracking, Your Honor. It

has been about 50 to 55 minutes.

THE COURT: Marijana is keeping track for me. You

want her to give you a notice?

MS. LERNER: How much time did you have that I used?

THE COURTROOM DEPUTY: About 55 minutes.

THE COURT: Okay. So if you want her to give you a

note or something, she'll do that.

MS. LERNER: There is no way I'm using two hours.

Mr. Zanzi would be very annoyed at me.

THE COURT: Yes.

(Jury in at 11:55 a.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

Feel free to pass the notes across because I get

involved in other things and I forget and operate on my own

internal clock sometimes. Any time you need to take a break,

pass a note and we'll do it.

Ms. Lerner.

MS. LERNER: Thank you, Your Honor.

Before we broke we were talking about how the

conspiracy members were using the computers and equipment at

the trustee's office to do their campaign work, and we had

covered Mr. Wheeler's computer, Ms. Shelton's computer, and we

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 76

were talking about Mr. Hunter's computer. And this is an

e-mail sent from Mr. Hunter. It appears to be a private e-mail

address, but he's sending it to these people at their township

trustee address, including Ms. Shelton, himself, and

Mr. Wheeler, and other people in this conspiracy, Ed Harris,

James Leslie, Lamar Taylor.

This is how they used their work computers. There

was nothing wrong to them in how they were using them. They

saw nothing wrong in using it for their own personal benefits.

This is, again, the Elgin Eagles meeting, and the Elgin Eagles

were the fundraising leg of EPIC for the men in the office.

Here is another e-mail from Chuck Winer. And,

again, I was reminding you that this was the individual who was

chatting about vacationing in Belize and in the Caribbean, and

then at the end of that discussion, Mr. Garbutt told you that

he handed Ethel Shelton a check. And when I asked Ms. Shelton

about that, she said she couldn't remember. Well, Mr. Winer

didn't think anything of using the township trustee's office to

do that kind of thing because that's probably what he was told

to do. He's sending information for an ad for the prayer book

to Ms. Shelton at her township trustee address and copying

Mr. Hunter on it.

Also, on Mr. Hunter's computer, something from

Ms. Shelton's precinct committee person campaign from a few

years ago.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 77

And then you heard testimony that Mr. Leslie was

doing a lot of printing of banners and things on the computers

and the banner printer at the office. On Mr. Leslie's computer

were found things he did for Alex Wheeler. Several of these

things, including the banner for the campaign headquarters that

included all three of the candidates at that time and for

Ms. Shelton, this is on James Leslie's computer. This is all

from James Leslie's computer.

And so, again, we have the conspiracy to commit wire

fraud. One of the elements of wire fraud is that materially

false pretense, representation. And, again, we don't have to

prove that there was one. It's just there to -- we believe

there was, and I'll explain it to you, but it's there to help

you understand what conspiracy they're charged with so you can

determine whether they joined it.

So here we have the handbook, which clearly states

that rest or coffee breaks are considered as time worked. Now,

of course, no one's going to say that if you want to go out to

lunch or, you know, eat at your desk that you have to abide by

whatever policies you were doing at work. It's your break.

This is time you get off. That doesn't mean you can violate

other policies in the handbook or violate the law just by

saying, "I'm on break," or "I'm on lunch."

It is considered -- they're paid for that time, and

it's considered part of the time that they're worked. And here

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 78

we have, of course -- this requirement prohibits employees from

performing any services for vendors or clients on nonworking

time that are normally performed by CTTO personnel. This

prohibition also extents to the unauthorized use of any CTTO

tools or equipment and the unauthorized use of any CTTO client

service methods and business.

Now, you don't need a handbook to tell you that you

can't do your campaign stuff at work, but it's there. And it

also prohibits misusing communication systems including

electronic mail, computers, internets, and telephones. One of

the instructions the judge gave you before I began was that

there's a handbook and you can use it to consider whether or

not the defendants had the requisite intent to commit the

crime.

This is proof that what they knew what they were

doing is wrong and they did it anyway. This is common sense,

and it's in the handbook as well.

Here's another misrepresentation that we mentioned

earlier. This is the -- from the recording on September 26,

2013, where as I mentioned Ms. Shelton failed to indicate that

she had taken personal business for two and a half hours for

that meeting. And in another meeting, the one on October 3rd

where Alex Wheeler got paid for the entire meeting that he sat

through, a political meeting, and then asked for 23 minutes of

comp time on top of that.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 79

And when you're hearing arguments about how hard

Mr. Wheeler worked and how he spent so much time working

overtime and out of the goodness of his heart, he didn't list

any of it. Ask yourself two things: First of all, what

evidence do I have of that? There's no evidence from anyone

that he was working those hours. Maybe he was. But there's no

evidence of it.

The evidence that you do have is that he is

extremely precise in his time sheets. When he comes in at

9:05, he puts down 9:05. When he wants 8 minutes of comp time,

23 minutes of comp time, 15 minutes of comp time, he puts it

down. Is someone who is that precise really going to be

lackadaisical about keeping his hours when he's asking for 23

minutes of comp time?

And then on this last element -- and this is a

stipulation that the judge read into the record, and it says

that the parties agree and stipulate that at the times alleged

in the Indictment, the payment of the township employees'

salaries and wages by check and through direct deposit,

electronic funds transfers, involved the transmission of

information and funds in interstate commerce.

And the other piece of that is that the whole

conspiracy to commit wire fraud is, at least in part, grounded

on the fact that they were using their own time at the

trustee's office and the time of the other employees that they

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 80

were using to help in the campaign instead of doing their own

work. So the payment of their salary, through interstate

commerce, is in furtherance of the scheme because they're

getting that salary when they're not supposed to be when

they're doing campaign work.

So I've just gone through the elements of wire

fraud, but I'm going to loop back to conspiracy because this is

the one that we have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

Here it is. This is a conspiracy as charged for

wire fraud as we just looked -- as we just discussed. And the

defendants knowingly became members of the conspiracy so they

could advance it, and someone in the conspiracy committed an

overt act to advance the goal of the conspiracy. So there was

a conspiracy to obtain money or property of the township by

using the time, resources, and employees of the township for

their own political interests rather than the benefit of the

citizens and the clients of the township.

And you saw evidence of this conspiracy. You saw it

through the recordings. You saw it through Lamar Taylor's

testimony when he told you about how many meetings they were

sitting through, regular meetings at the north annex on EPIC.

You saw all the material on their computers, all the material

in their office. There was a conspiracy to use the township as

their campaign headquarters, and the defendants knowingly

became members so they could advance it. These people all

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 81

participated in that conspiracy. They were all doing what they

could to make it happen, including Ms. Shelton and Mr. Wheeler.

And, again, remember from earlier, if a defendant

joins a conspiracy, as long as they do it knowingly and

voluntarily with the intent to advance the goal, they don't

have to play any particular role.

And, finally, an overt act -- sorry -- was committed

in furtherance of the conspiracy. Here we have several that

were committed. There were tickets distributed at the township

office, collecting money at the township office, sending

mailings at the township office. These are all the ones we

just reviewed. Using the time at the township office to run

the employee campaigns, political meetings, planning and

organizing political fundraisers, and using the office

basically as their campaign headquarters and the computers and

printers as well.

The citizens of Calumet Township basically made

involuntary contributions to Mary Elgin's campaign and, by

extension, to Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler's campaign when

they were running their campaigns out of that office.

The second conspiracy is to defraud the Calumet

Township of honest services of the elected official, and that's

Mary Elgin, and the purpose of it is to enrich her political

campaign. And the way they did it was the employees bought

campaign tickets in exchange for job security.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 82

So the scheme of conspiracy to defraud honest

services -- conspiracy to commit honest services fraud -- sorry

-- is basically depriving the citizens of Calumet Township of

the intangible right to the honest services of the trustee and

the employees of the CTTO through kickbacks of the employees'

salaries to the trustee.

Now, this word "honest services" I know some people

kind of laugh when you're talking about it in terms of a

politician, but, nonetheless, when an elected official takes

office, they have an obligation and the public as a right to

their honest services without corruption, and they cannot do

that office in a corrupt way without violating this law. And

that's what this law covers. And in this situation, it was

done through kickbacks, and I'll explain that in a minute.

And the reason that the public official must do that

is they have a fiduciary duty to act only for the benefit of

the people, not just who elected him but for the people that

they serve, their constituents. A public official owes a

fiduciary duty to the public.

Now, the defendants in this case don't have to owe

that fiduciary duty themselves. As long as they participate in

a kickback scheme intended to deprive the public of its right

to Mary Elgin -- the fiduciary's honest services.

So what is a kickback? The judge told you it's kind

of the same thing as a bribe, but the main difference is the

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timing is different. So usually when you think of a bribe, you

think -- okay. So you have the public official. You have the

person who wants to make the bribe. They give the money to the

public official, and then the public official performs an

official action, you know, like putting a bill into law or

signing an ordinance or something like that.

The kickback, it's a little bit different. You have

the public official. They take the official action first, and

that produces money. And from that pot of money, some of that

-- most of that -- goes to the payer, and some of that goes to

the public official.

The most traditional way people think and understand

this is that if there's a contract that needs to be signed for

garbage services and someone wants to get that contract from

the city, they may go to the mayor or whoever is making the

decision and say, "Look, Mr. Mayor, I really want this

contract, but I can't afford to pay you the bribe right now.

But if you let me have the contract, I can charge the city 10

percent more and then kick back the rest of it to you."

That's how it works. It's a bribe. It's just that

the timing of it is different than the normal bribe, but it's

the same thing. It requires a quid pro quo. It requires an

understanding that the employees will exchange a thing of

value -- in this case, it's buying fundraising tickets -- for

an official act, which is staying off the layoff list.

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And keep in mind also that the instructions tell you

that a solicitation for a kickback is also enough to make part

of this quid pro quo. It doesn't have to be an actual payment.

So the distribution of tickets at the office is a solicitation

for a kickback. And the official act doesn't have to happen,

so the people don't have to be laid off for the quid pro quo to

be met, as long as it's promised or threatened or whatever.

So in this situation, in this scheme to commit

honest services fraud, we have the public official and those

acting on her behalf, Mary Elgin and the coconspirators,

Alex Wheeler, Ethel Shelton, and others. And the official

action that they're taking is they let the employees keep their

jobs and stay off the layoff list, and this leads to employees

having their salary, which goes directly to them. And then the

employees kick back part of that salary in the form of tickets

to Mary Elgin, which is a very lucrative situation for her.

Recall when Ethel Shelton was testifying, I asked

her how many employees participate in the extravaganza, and she

said about 35 to 40 percent. And at the end of her tenure,

there were about 80 employees. Let's assume 100 for the sake

of simplicity, and 40 percent of the employees are

participating. You know that about a dozen of those are

deputies, and you know that they have to buy five tickets each.

And then you know that everybody else has to buy at least two

tickets, some three or four. That's a lot of money. That's a

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lot of money that she expects, and that's not even at full

participation.

And that's why it was important that everyone in her

circle make sure that the employees knew they had to buy

tickets. Even if they couldn't really exert a lot of leverage,

they could do it by threatening to lay them off. That's why

Ethel Shelton was calling Gladys Miller and Linda Collins-Brown

to tell them, "You have to buy those tickets."

So, again, you heard the testimony of Gladys Miller

who told you she regularly bought the tickets except that one

time and got chewed out for it. Lamar Taylor told you that it

was the expectation. The employees were considered part of

EPIC by those in the inner circle.

The employees may not of thought of themselves that

way, but EPIC thought of them that way. Elena Lynch, who dared

not to buy the tickets, got fired. And that's the exact reason

that Steven Hunter gave Warrien Poole for why she was faired.

Horace Clay was confident he wasn't going to get fired because

he was on payment plan. He was making $22,000 a year, but he

knew if he paid his $11 per pay period, he would be okay.

Cynthia Holman-Upshaw who, like I said, enjoyed

going to these fundraisers but knew it was expected of her.

Same thing with Ms. Piggee who got collection letters when she

couldn't pay right away. John Davis, he couldn't buy the

tickets. He was given tickets, but he couldn't buy them, so he

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tried to help in other ways. And Warrien Poole, again, given

tickets by Steven Hunter to buy at the office, and same thing

with Linda Collins-Brown.

And they kept track of who paid and who didn't for

years. There are so many of these, I couldn't possibly show

them to you in slow motion without putting you all to sleep.

But there are -- and this isn't even all of them in these

boxes, in these five boxes. This is only a sampling of the

ones that are in there. And this is really the most important

part. What is the point of keeping track of who did not pay?

It doesn't go on the campaign finance report. What's the

purpose of keeping track of who didn't pay other than to

threaten the employees that you might lay them off if they

didn't get with the program?

This was found in Ethel Shelton's desk. This is the

list the employees wanted to stay off of. They had no union.

They had no protection. They didn't want to be on this list.

She told you she wasn't involved in firing or layoffs but it

was in her desk along with campaign material.

And what are the employees worth? Well, I gave you

a rough estimate. Here's an exact one. This is an

extravaganza. It's in November. If you recall, they're

usually before Thanksgiving. There were 81 employees in

attendance. At $100 a ticket, that's $8,100 for one fundraiser

on an off year. There were two other fundraisers that year,

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three per year, and certainly during election years they were

making more.

In their own words, here is Ms. Shelton agreeing

that some people are going to pay and some people are not going

to pay. It doesn't matter how much time you give them.

And then Ms. Elgin says, "You have to take them to

lunch off campus, kind of like an incentive thing. I need

100 percent. We still have our jobs. It's election time

because we still got our jobs. I really need you to pay. I

really need you to pay. I need 100 percent. Would you pay for

your ticket? Can we just pay by edict?"

This is the message that Mary Elgin wants her

deputies to send to her employees. She is connecting the

tickets with their jobs. She is making it explicit.

And here is Alex Wheeler again, as you recall,

frustrated because he doesn't have any leverage over these

employees. And Ethel says, "That's right." She's agreeing

with him. She says, "You tell them to buy the ticket and then"

-- of course, we've heard about this -- "there's no

consequences." He told Mary from the very first year that

you've got to give people a year, and then you've got to take

out that stick. But, as Ethel said, there's no consequences.

They're frustrated by that.

I guess maybe they wanted a one to one correlation

that if you don't buy your tickets you definitely get fired

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instead of if you don't buy your tickets you might get fired.

It's not clear what consequences they're talking about, but

they wanted consequences. And here we have Alex Wheeler

talking about, "I'm not talking about the law."

This is Stafford telling them they might be aware of

the law. And he's like, "I'm not talking about the law. What

I'm saying is if you know nothing's ever going to happen to you

legally, you can't force anybody to do a damn thing. You can't

coerce anybody if you don't have a mechanism to coerce them

with." And Ethel says, "They think they can do their job and

that's it."

They knew this was illegal. It's in their own

words, and they said that when they didn't know that you were

going to be listening.

In this situation, in an honest services fraud, the

fraud is on the public, the deprivation of the honest services

of the public official. And so the materially false

representation is that they were performing a fiduciary duty to

the public free of corruption.

And this is the letter that we talked about earlier

on in Government's Exhibit 60, one that's signed by

Alex Wheeler which says one week after taking office Mary

called a meeting of all township employees and announced she

was immediately abolishing the decades-old practice whereby

employees were required to donate two percent of their earnings

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to a so-called political fund.

She declared she would rather have a harder time

raising political funds voluntarily given than to know she was

preying on helpless employees. That is the kind of

compassionate individual she is. But when there is an implicit

threat that your job is on the line, how voluntarily given is

that donation?

Again, because they're both wire fraud schemes, we

have the same stipulation that applies regarding salary and

wages being paid by interstate commerce, and in here it's the

salary of the trustee and those also running for -- sorry --

the trustee's salary being paid through check and wire that was

in furtherance of the scheme.

So, again, this is the -- these are the elements

that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

The conspiracy: That it was charged; that the defendants

knowingly became members so they could advance it; and then

someone in the conspiracy committed an overt act in furtherance

of.

In here, the conspiracy was to deprive the citizens

of the Calumet Township of their right to honest services

through kickbacks of the employees' salaries to the township,

and we saw that through the evidence and the testimony. We saw

that the defendants participated. We saw through the tapes

that I just showed the transcripts from. We saw from the

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testimony of people that said that they went to Ms. Shelton to

pay and they got tickets from Ms. Shelton to distribute. We

saw it from the EPIC meetings that were recorded where they're

discussing doing the distribution and selling and how people

were saying they have to do it on break in order to make it

legitimate.

This is the conspiracy that these defendants were a

part of, and they were frustrated that they didn't have more

leverage. It wasn't that they weren't a part of it. They were

frustrated that they didn't have more leverage that they could

use. They wanted to do more to make sure those tickets were

bought. And the overt act, distributing tickets at work,

collecting money, keeping track of who pays and who doesn't,

pointing out who's a team player and who's not, harassing

people if they refused to buy tickets.

Employees were led to believe that retention

depended on their purchases. Wheeler admitted in his interview

with law enforcement that the process was meant to be

intimidating. The distribution of tickets and the collection

of money, it was meant to be intimidating. They were both

frustrated that there were no consequences, and Wheeler told

Mary from day one to enforce consequences.

So those are the two charges. I want to address a

couple of things. We heard in Ms. Shelton's testimony that she

was really trying to distance herself from Mary Elgin, for

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obvious reasons, because you've heard a lot about Mary Elgin in

the trial. This trial is about Mary Elgin and it's not. She's

part of the conspiracy, but she's not on trial here.

When she didn't know that you were going to be

listening in, Mary Elgin said that, "She's still my best

friend," and Ethel said that too. And you heard that there was

a falling out between the two of them. Well, Ethel says we

fall out all the time. It's no big deal.

And you also heard Ms. Shelton repeatedly saying

she's just a secretary. She was doing what she was told. She

didn't really have any authority, except that when asked, "You

have more influence as her secretary than you'll have on the

board," she said, "Oh, yeah, absolutely. They don't know that.

They think that it's the other way around." She actually had a

lot of influence in that position because Mary trusted her with

her money. Mary trusted her with her cash. Mary trusted her

with making sure the tickets were distributed, making sure the

payments were made, making sure that she went after employees

who were not paying for their tickets.

This was -- these were important parts of her

fundraising, and she trusted Ethel Shelton with that because

she was friends with Ethel Shelton for a long time. No matter

how much Ms. Shelton wants to distance herself from Mary Elgin

now, that's not true. You heard Lamar Taylor say that he saw

them and considered them close friends from as far back as the

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 92

first campaign.

And then you have, of course, the statement that

Alex Wheeler made to law enforcement where he said the

distribution and the collection -- distribution of tickets and

the collection of money were intended to be intimidating, and

he was frustrated he had no leverage.

Alex Wheeler was her longtime campaign manager,

again, from the very beginning. He gave tickets to his

employees as he was given them from Ethel Shelton. He

participated in the meetings. He was part of the EPIC inner

circle.

These two were part of a team. Mary needed people

she could trust, people who could advance her political

interests. She depended on these two, her longtime campaign

manager and her close friend. I expect the defendants will

point the finger at Mary Elgin and say it had nothing to do

with me, but it was Ethel Shelton who chose to do the things

that she did. And it was Alex Wheeler who handed out tickets

and encouraged his coconspirators to use a heavy hand and

promised to give 100 percent participation. He told Elena

Lynch to make it right if she wanted to keep her job.

They committed to 100 percent participation.

They're not on trial here for what Mary did. They're on trial

for what they did. This case is about accountability. It is

about using the trustee's office for their own personal gain,

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 93

not just themselves personally but the entire conspiracy

including Mary Elgin.

Hold these defendants accountable. Review the

evidence and return the verdict that the evidence requires,

guilty on all counts.

THE COURT: Ms. Gambino.

MS. GAMBINO: Thank you, Your Honor. It is going to

take me a second to get set up here, so if you want to stand up

and stretch and move around a little.

Can you hear me? Great.

CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON

MS. GAMBINO: When I stood before you at the very

beginning of this trial, I told you that Ethel Shelton was

presumed innocent, she's not guilty of the charges here, and

that the evidence would not support a finding that she is. And

now you have had a chance to review all of the evidence, and

I'm going to go back through it briefly, not in great detail

because I know that you've been paying close attention and you

have your own ideas and impressions about the evidence. There

is no conspiracy here, ladies and gentlemen.

Conspiracy is an agreement to do something illegal.

And at no moment during the entire time that the government is

alleged the supposed conspiracy went on did Mrs. Shelton agree

with Mary Elgin or Alex Wheeler or any other person to engage

in any conduct, and the government's evidence simply hasn't

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shown that's true. Mrs. Shelton did not agree to commit fraud

against the citizens of Calumet Township or fraud against

anyone else.

Mrs. Shelton all her life -- and you've heard a lot

about Mrs. Shelton's background, has been a hardworking, honest

and dedicated --

THE COURT: Ms. Gambino, I don't think your mike's

working.

MS. GAMBINO: Oops. I guess it helps if I turn it

on. Sorry. Is that better?

(The jury collectively responded.)

MS. GAMBINO: Okay. Good.

Anyway, Mrs. Shelton is a dedicated, hardworking,

and honest individual. And if the government suggests that

Mary Elgin trusted Ethel Shelton with her money, which we could

talk about a little bit later, she did so because she knew that

Mrs. Shelton is an honest woman and that Mrs. Shelton is not

going to steal from her and not going to write checks to

herself and is not going to do anything that she's not supposed

to do because she's a person of character, honesty, and

integrity. And she conducted herself that way throughout the

entire course of her work with Mrs. Elgin just the same way she

had conducted herself throughout the entire course of her work

for the steel mill, how she had conducted herself when she

worked for the dress shop.

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You know, my mom once upon a time said a leopard

doesn't change its spots. And you have heard from every

witness that testified here, including government's witnesses,

that Mrs. Shelton is nothing if not a person of character and

integrity and honesty and decency and somebody who's

compassionate and willing to help other people.

And you don't start out that way from the time that

you're a young woman in the '60s struggling to support your

kids and family and trying to help workers in the steel mill

and raising a family and raising your family's family and then

suddenly end up and decide to participate in illegal activities

when you're 72. I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen. It just

doesn't happen that way.

Did Mrs. Shelton agree with Mary Elgin or anyone

else to participate in bribery? Of course, she didn't. There

is absolutely no evidence of bribery in the case, and you even

heard Agent Holbrook testify to that.

And as far as kickbacks go, we all know what

kickbacks are, and being a neighbor to Illinois, certainly, you

know what kickbacks are. Kickbacks are when some big

contractor promises to put money in a politician's pocket if he

gets to work on the tollway or if he gets to work on the

highways. We're not talking about kickbacks in this case,

ladies and gentlemen.

If the government's theory is correct, then every

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 96

single political donation that anybody ever makes anywhere is a

kickback. And to suggest that Ms. Elgin, in trying to get her

employees to participate as well as getting community members

to participate by making voluntarily donations was asking for a

kickback is absurd. It's completely absurd, and it's even more

absurd to suggest that Mrs. Shelton agreed in any way, shape,

or form to try and get employees to involuntarily buy tickets,

which is essentially what the accusation here is.

Let's talk about what the government alleges. They

allege that the conspiracy, if it exists, started in 2003 and

lasted all the way until 2014. Now, we know that that's not

true for a number of reason. But with respect to Mrs. Shelton,

for sure we know it's not true.

And how do we know that? First of all, there is no

agreement back in 2003. Mrs. Shelton told you about her

relationship with Mary Elgin, how their families and selves had

crossed paths over the years, and she was a friend and an

acquaintance of Mrs. Elgin. She hadn't yet become her best

friend but she knew her, and she was asked to participate after

Mrs. Elgin won her first election in 2003.

Mary Elgin asked her if she wanted a supervisory

position. And is that hard to understand? No, it's not hard

to understand because Mary Elgin knew about Ethel Shelton's

role in union organization when she was working in the steel

mills, and she knew that Mrs. Shelton was good at organizing,

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 97

detail oriented, and that she was an energetic worker.

But did Mrs. Shelton say, "Sure, I'll become a

deputy or supervisor"? No, she didn't say that. And why

didn't she say that? One, because she didn't know what a

deputy was, didn't know what a supervisor was.

And Mrs. Shelton is also a careful person, and she

doesn't want to overextend what she does or promise to do

things she doesn't know how to do.

Two, she'd already worked for 35 years in the steel

mill. She had a nice part-time job in a clothing store she

liked. She didn't really need a job. And if she was going to

take another one that would help the community and be

interesting, she didn't want to have to do it full time.

She asked Mrs. Elgin if she could have a part-time

job, and Mrs. Elgin as part of her campaign had claimed that

she's not going to have a bunch of part-time employees because

that had been a problem with the prior administration. If

Mrs. Shelton was going to come on board, it was going to be

full time.

And you know, based on the testimony, that she was

offered a position once Ms. Elgin won, and it was in the

finance department. She came in as a finance clerk making, you

know, 25, $28,000, whatever it was. And she did that position

from 2003 to 2006, and she was an employee just like any other

employee.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 98

She wasn't involved in dealing with the tickets.

Her deputy was giving tickets to her. And she said, yes, she

would buy the tickets as the finance clerk because she believes

in supporting the organizations that she belongs to. If she

believed in Mary Elgin and her politics and what she was trying

to do at the township, she was going to support Mary Elgin the

same way that she would support her church, that she would

support her family, that she would support the people and

causes that she believed in.

Now, come 2006/2007, Mary Elgin, who you've heard

very much about, is a rather difficult person to deal with.

She had already lost two secretaries, and she was looking for

another secretary to take the place of the most recent one that

had just left, and so she asked Mrs. Shelton to be her

secretary. Why would she do that? Because Mrs. Shelton knows

how to deal with workers, and she knows how to deal with

management. She had experience doing this at the steel plant.

She's an even-keeled person, and she's a quiet person, but

she's quiet and strong. She can be funny and all those things.

So then she becomes a secretary. Now, selling and

distribution of the tickets, the fundraising tickets, that was

something that had been going on since the very beginning of

Mary Elgin's time with the township, and she had a system in

place, and this is how she did it. Some employees bought their

tickets and some employees didn't, and it was the secretary who

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take care of keeping track of the tickets.

Now, why do you need to keep track of the tickets?

Well, you need to keep track of the tickets because politicians

have to keep track of everybody who makes donations to them,

and they have to provide the amount and the name and the

address of the person who's donating and put it in their

campaign finance reports. Somebody's got to do that work.

Why would you keep track of people that don't pay?

Well, if you've ever worked in an organization or worked on an

event or a fundraising event or something that happens yearly,

you know that you want to get involved the people that are

supporters. You want to try to encourage other people to

become involved, and you need to know how many tickets you're

going to want to buy for the next year.

If it turns out that half or 60 percent of your

people are not buying your tickets, then maybe you don't want

to order as many tickets the next time around.

The government suggests to you without a single

scintilla of evidence that there was a layoff list. No such

list existed. You haven't seen that list. You haven't been

presented with any deputy who said we kept such a list or any

individual who said there actually was such a list. This is

employee talk. This is rumors. This is the sort of thing that

happens any time an organization has a layoff.

Everybody gets afraid of who's going to have to go.

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Last one in, first one out. You've got seniority. You don't.

The boss likes you. She doesn't like me. And, you know,

that's what happens during the time of a layoff.

And why was there a layoff? This wasn't the

creation of Mary Elgin. As you will recall, Mary Elgin did a

lot of pretty significant work for the township. She was --

she had moved one building -- from one building to the next.

She had found another location that was much improved not only

for the clients but for the employees. Several people talked

about that.

She was involved in trying to save the township's

budget. The township needed the budget to be able to help the

people it served, and there were people in the state who were

trying to take the budget away. So she was fighting with the

state officials and various other people to try and maintain

their budget. And when the state didn't provide money or they

didn't have enough to meet their budget, she had to make budget

cuts. And that's a normal thing.

You know, it's not as if you've been led to believe

that layoffs were somehow used as some kind of a threat or

another. She would have much rather -- if you listened to the

full context of the political meetings that had been recorded

by Stafford Garbutt, she would much rather have not laid off

anyone and kept her office functioning at full speed.

Also, ladies and gentlemen, you have to kind of

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wonder about the timing of an investigation when it happens

during an election year. That just has to raise a little bit

of suspicion, but let's go back to the conspiracy that's

alleged.

So we know that Mrs. Shelton doesn't even begin to

be involved in dealing with tickets, a system that's already in

place before she ever gets there, until she becomes a

secretary, and they move into the new building in 2008.

Now, Mrs. Shelton didn't have to come in and testify

but she did; and she answered my questions, and she answered

the government's questions, and she answered your questions.

And what she said with respect to the relationship between the

tickets and the supposed layoffs is there wasn't any. That she

would never have agreed with Mrs. Shelton [verbatim] to try and

force anyone to buy any tickets, and she didn't do that.

Now, there were two incidents of phone conversations

that were upsetting to both Mrs. Shelton and to the people she

had conversations with, one in 2009 and one in 2013. And she

was making those phone calls as Mrs. Elgin's secretary. You

know, there are two things going on here. Mrs. Shelton is an

employee, and she's not even one of the most highly paid

employee. She makes less money than the deputies. She makes

less money than the assistant deputies, and she makes far less

money than Stafford Garbutt or Mary Elgin. She got no special

perks. She got her salary. She didn't ask for special perks.

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She would have liked to have had a township car. The other

secretaries did, but she didn't. She would have liked to have

had her gas paid for and her insurance paid for; but it wasn't

offered to her, and she didn't have it.

She would have liked to have had Stafford Garbutt's

-- who wouldn't like to have Stafford Garbutt's $60,000 salary

for doing we're not quite sure what, but she didn't have that

either. So we're not talking about personal benefits to

Ethel Shelton other than the salary that she worked very hard

to earn.

Now, in 2013, we know that she and Mary Elgin are

having problems and their friendship is on the rocks, and she's

deciding she's going to run for board membership, a campaign

which doesn't work out, and eventual she's not elected. And

onward her life goes, and she continues to work, not in

politics.

But to say that she was involved in a conspiracy to

engage in criminal conduct from 2003 to 2014 rests on

absolutely no evidence. They are relying on phone

conversations -- or rather recorded conversations and

allegations and recordings made by Stafford Garbutt for a very

brief time in 2013 to establish a 10- or 11-year conspiracy.

And it doesn't even make sense because during the whole first

three quarters of this alleged conspiracy, Mrs. Shelton wasn't

even in a position to be involved in the conduct they are

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alleging was illegal.

And they're saying that this is somehow some kind of

fraud. Nobody has alleged here nor has any evidence been

provided that Mrs. Shelton made any fraudulent statements of

any kind. And, in fact, you've had an opportunity to listen to

Mrs. Shelton's testimony and evaluate it, and she admitted to

facts that weren't necessarily all that helpful to her.

She was asked about the conversation between her and

Gladys Miller, which obviously was upsetting to Gladys miller.

She didn't recall it. She didn't claim that Mrs. Miller didn't

say those things or that they didn't have the conversation.

What she said was, "I respect Gladys Miller. She's a woman

who's very careful and detailed in her work. If she said it

happened, it probably happened." No intent to deceive anyone.

Every single person who has testified up there has

said about Ethel Shelton that she's going to tell you what she

thinks: Good, bad, ugly, whatever it is. She's going to say

what's on her mind. She's not trying to deceive anyone about

what she said or why she did it. No intent to hide any

conduct.

When Ethel Shelton tells you, "I didn't believe it

was wrong to do some campaign work or personal work on my

breaks or at my lunch hour or after work," it's because that's

what she believed. And why does she believe that? Because the

leadership of the organization didn't lead her to believe

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anything else.

Use your common sense, ladies and gentlemen. How

many times have you been at work and you had to make a doctor's

appointment? You had to get in touch with a friend for

something. You had to arrange a family member' birthday party.

You had to do something that required you to do business during

business hours. You do that on your lunch break. You do that

on whatever break you have. You do that after work. And you

don't think that you're violating any law by doing that.

And nobody has pointed out to you in this courtroom

any law that has been violated by doing personal work or

campaign work on your lunch hour or on your break. Even this

employee handbook which, by the way, is put together by the

trustee herself and changes at the desires and whims of the

trustee, is not clear about what activities are prohibited

except for those that are going to conflict with the business

of the township.

What about actual deception by Ethel Shelton in

terms of her work? She worked -- her normal hours were 8:00 to

4:00. And if you look at the attendance sheets that have been

put into evidence, you'll see that she entered comp time, sick

time, vacation days. Some days were 8:00 to 4:00. Some days

were less. So 8:00 to 4:00 was normal, but there were times

when she worked less. Could she record times when she worked

more? No. Why not? Because the handbook also says that flex

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 105

time and overtime and comp time are all at the discretion of

the supervisor, and her supervisor was Mary Elgin. And

Mary Elgin told her, as Mrs. Shelton told you, that she didn't

allow her to record her comp time because they were working

late all the time and she didn't want to set up an appearance

or favoritism or impropriety or anything like that by having

Mrs. Shelton earn all this extra comp time.

So she didn't. She stayed after work, and she made

up work. If she went over an hour and a half on her lunch time

for a meeting offsite paid for by EPIC that Mary asked her to

be at, then she would work longer at the end of the day to make

up for whatever work she didn't get done.

Mrs. Shelton would have done that anyway because

that's the kind of worker she is. She takes pride in her work.

She works hard, and she wants to get the things done that she

has to do. So she worked extra hours. If anything, the

citizens of Calumet Township and the Calumet Township Trustee's

Office owed her money that she didn't ask for that she would

never be paid for. So the idea that she was somehow cheating

anyone out of her work and her good efforts is simply untrue.

It's a fantasy.

Bribery. We don't have to spend much time on

bribery. But no quid pro quo. No this for that. No money

going into Mrs. Shelton's pockets. No money going into

Mary Elgin's pockets. No money going anywhere where it doesn't

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 106

belong. There is no bribery in the case.

Kickbacks. The problem with the government's theory

about kickbacks is that you have to have both the quid and the

quo. Both the "this' and the "that." And what we have in this

case is a handful of employees who were disgruntled or upset

about something or another who believed that there was a layoff

list, who believed that their contributions would have

something to do with whether they got fired or not, but no

official offer or act on the other side.

Nobody got hired and were sat down and said, "You're

going to have to be a part of my EPIC team and you're going to

have to make political contribution or I'm not going to hire

you." Nobody testified to that, and there is not even the

implication of that. And the reason you know that is because

there were at least three or four people who testified here who

had started off in Dozier Allen's administration, and they were

rehired. They weren't political friends. They weren't

political -- but they were qualified people, and they were

rehired by the Elgin administration. It had nothing to do with

whether money was going to come out of their salary or wasn't.

It's not good enough for people to imagine or

believe that there's some layoff list or that their jobs are

dependent of these contributions. There has to be some

evidence of it. There is nothing but the speculation of

evidence of it.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 107

Now, we have to talk about Stafford, although I

would rather not. And the Judge is going to give you an

instruction, and the instruction is going to say that you have

to consider Stafford Garbutt's testimony with caution and great

care. And the reason that you do that is because he, if not

actually offered benefits, believed he was offered benefits and

was involved in criminal activity himself. And in return for

his work with the FBI agent, nothing happened to him.

Now, what do we know about Mr. Garbutt and his

motivation? First of all, Mr. Garbutt didn't want to own up to

you that he had an intimate relationship with Mary Elgin when

he first started off, but you know that's true. How do you

know that's true?

First of all, Mrs. Shelton told you that that's what

happened, and she was in a position to observe and see the

comings and goings of Mary Elgin and Stafford Garbutt. And how

else do you know that? Who else gets to create their own job,

get highest pay in the organization, create a completely new

job -- nobody's sure what it is and what it does -- that hasn't

been in existence before, gets $60,000, get a car, get gas, get

insurance, and live with the boss? Does that happen to

somebody who is not having a relationship with a boss? I mean,

that's just -- we can use our common sense. That makes no

sense.

And why was it that he went to the FBI after waiting

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 108

13 years to do that? Mr. Garbutt started out with Mary Elgin

at the very beginning back in 2003. Well, because we also know

and he grudgingly admitted, that after he and Mary Elgin fell

out, he lost $15,000 from his salary. She took away his car.

She took away his gas, and she took away his insurance. And

she humiliated him in front of others.

So Stafford Garbutt may have a conscience with a

slow burn, and he may like to now conceptualize himself as a

whistleblower; but really what Mr. Garbutt is is a vengeance

seeker. And why would he include Mrs. Shelton in that? He

kind of lumped her in with Mary Elgin. And you also know,

although he didn't want to own up to you, he and Mrs. Shelton

had some pretty serious differences of opinion with respect to

their various religious and philosophical views. He, in fact,

had contempt for Mrs. Shelton's beliefs, and he made her feel

bad about them. But he wasn't willing to say that, and he

wasn't willing to own up to the fact that he had an affair with

his boss while his wife was living in Belize.

Now, do we bring that up to make any kind of

judgment about his moral principals? No. We bring that up

because that is a measure of deceit. That is an unwillingness

to say what's what and to hide the truth. And it's important

because it goes to credibility, and it's super important in

this case because the whole case is based on this man's word.

He chose who he recorded. He chose the documents he took out

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 109

of the office. He chose what he was going to do, when he was

going to do it, and how he was going to do it. And the FBI

agents relied on him. They relied on his representations, and

they relied on him being a truth teller when he clearly wasn't.

This is a jury instruction that the Judge has read.

And as you can see -- and it will be in your packet -- you may

give this witness's testimony whatever weight you believe is

appropriate keeping in mind that you must consider that

testimony with caution and great care, not only because he

received these benefits, but he's a liar. He wasn't honest

with FBI Agent Holbrook. He didn't tell him about his

relationship with Mary Elgin. He didn't tell him why he lost

the income, the car, and the perks. And he told him that his

wife was living here.

You heard him Agent Holbrook testify, "Oh, I think

his wife was living here with him." But he told you guys that

his wife, he admitted, lives in Belize; had to stay in Belize

because of their property in Belize; and she only came up here

to visit. She never lived here.

He was dishonest with you about his relationship,

and he was dishonest with you about his conduct and feelings

with respect to Mrs. Shelton.

Now, we don't blame the FBI agent for relying on

Mr. Garbutt, although he could have done a much more thorough

investigation into what Mr. Garbutt was all about. He was a

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 110

new agent, and he had only managed two informants before. This

is an informant that really got over on him.

Now, in order for this supposed system of

intimidation to work, you have to have the cooperation of the

deputies because they are the ones giving out the tickets to

their employees. You had two deputies that came here and

testified, Cynthia Holman-Upshaw and Lamar Taylor, and each of

them said they didn't discuss the tickets with their employees.

They didn't tell their employees that they were going to be on

a layoff list if they didn't buy the tickets. They didn't even

discuss the tickets at all. It was up to the employees to buy

the tickets or not buy the tickets.

Cynthia Holman-Upshaw didn't even think this

extravaganza was a political event. She thought it was a

social event. They were trying to create an atmosphere of

support for the work of the office, and this was a reward.

This was something that people liked to go to. It was a nice

event. And Lamar Taylor contributed his tickets because he

supported Mary. He was her campaign manager. But he didn't

tell you that he went around coercing his employees to buy

tickets or that anyone else did either.

Now, there's a difference between the testimony of

Lamar Taylor and Mrs. Shelton on the question of when they met,

and that's understandable. They had associations with each

other over a long period of time. Neither Mrs. Shelton nor

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 111

Mr. Taylor are super young anymore, although very energetic and

well spoken, and it's just quite possible that he's mistaken

about how he and Mrs. Shelton met.

Mrs. Shelton told you when she met him and how she

got involved with Mary Elgin and how she got involved with the

campaign, and she simply wasn't involved with the first

campaign. She didn't come involved with the Elgin political

campaigns until the second round.

Let's talk about Gladys Miller. Gladys Miller was a

lovely person. She trained Mrs. Shelton when she came to

finance, and the phone call that she was upset about that

occurred in 2013, or whenever it was -- I don't remember

exactly. You all probably have a better memory about that than

I do. Mrs. Elgin had asked Mrs. Shelton as her secretary to

call Gladys Miller and set up a meeting, and that's what

Mrs. Shelton was trying to do.

Now, she was persistent in trying to do it because

her boss asked her to do it, and typically when your boss asks

you to get a job done, you want to get the job done. Set up a

meeting. Okay. I'll set up the meeting.

There was no negative after effect as a result of

that. We don't know that the subject of that meeting was

tickets because there was no followup on that, and Mrs. Miller

didn't testify that she had any bad feelings about Ethel or

Mrs. Shelton after that, and she didn't buy the tickets at that

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 112

time. Not only did she not buy the tickets at that time, but

she's still working for the CTTO. And she, who distributed

tickets to employees also, never testified that she coerced,

forced, or said anything to employees about whether or not they

had to buy their tickets.

Linda Collins-Brown is the other person who had a

problematic interaction with Mrs. Shelton in 2009, and we're

talking about one problematic interaction in a work

relationship that lasted for 10 years. I mean, I don't know

about you all, but I certainly have had more than one

problematic interaction with people over the course of 10

years. I think one is pretty good.

What do we know about Ms. Collins-Brown? She

received -- she was one of the ones that started off in Dozier

Allen's administration. She received work related reprimand

from her deputy. She didn't want to be here in this courtroom

to testify. And what she expressed about the telephone

conversation that she had with Mrs. Shelton was that she was

upset with Mary Elgin. Mrs. Shelton had asked Mary Elgin to

call her and tell her that she wasn't going to be -- that Ethel

was not going to be permitted by Mrs. Elgin to take back the

tickets, and Linda Collins-Brown didn't take that well. She

wrote a letter. You saw the letter. And at her request,

Mrs. Shelton returned to her everything she had sent.

Same thing as with Miller, there are no subsequent

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 113

bad interactions reported between she and Mrs. Shelton for the

remainder of her work there. It was an incident that happened

in 2009, and Linda Collins-Brown is still with the CTTO. She

wasn't involved with trying to coerce or be coerced or

threatened or anything else with respect to tickets.

Now, Elena Lynch, she's the young woman who

testified she believed she was laid off or fired because she

didn't buy tickets. Well, that may or may not be true. What

we do know from Warrien Poole is that Elena Lynch was

overqualified for the job that she applied for and that she was

hired by Steven Hunter against Warrien Poole's advice. Warrien

warned Steven, you know, she's not going to work out with us

because she needs more money and challenge than we're going to

be able to give her here. She's going to get bored. Sure

enough, that's what happened. She got bored. She didn't have

enough challenge.

So then she became difficult to deal with from

Warrien Poole's point of view, and then it got to the point

where she had to go. Well, Steven Hunter, facing Warrien Poole

saying I told you so, it'd be much easier for him if he did

say, "Well, she was not a team playing. She didn't buy her

tickets so we just got rid of her." It's much easier of

Steven Hunter to say that than to say, "You're right, Warrien.

You were right. I was wrong. I shouldn't have hired her in

the first place."

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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And what does she say about Mrs. Shelton? She went

up to Mrs. Shelton to fix her computers, and she was very

pleasant to interact with and had absolutely no dealings with

Mrs. Shelton around the question of tickets.

Now, Horace Clay is the only person who claimed in

court that he bought tickets as job security, and perhaps in

his mind that's what he did. But his deputy was Lamar Taylor,

and you know that Lamar Taylor testified that he never talked

to his employees about tickets. So if Mr. Clay thought it was

going to be job security for him, nobody in authority ever told

him that.

We know it wasn't, in fact, true because

Mrs. Shelton told you that at one point in time when layoffs

were being considered and they had to get rid of people out of

Mr. Taylor's area, Mr. Horace Clay's head was on the chopping

block, and Ethel intervened and said, "No, you shouldn't get

rid of him now because he's ill and needs the insurance." Now,

Mr. Clay doesn't know that, but that's the fact of it.

And what about John Davis? He seemed like a nice

guy. If you remember when he was on the stand and we started

to talk about that the agents came to his house to talk to him.

And he said at first it started out okay, and they were sitting

around his kitchen table. And then one of the agents started

pounding her first on his table, and it made him feel a little

bit scared, a little bit uncomfortable. Mr. Davis was not

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happy being here. He felt he was not here under his own will.

And what else do we know about Mr. Davis? We know

he didn't buy tickets at all. Nothing ever happened to him.

He didn't say he felt coerced or forced or threatened or on a

layoff list because he didn't buy tickets. It didn't seem to

matter to him at all. The person he felt intimidated by was

the FBI agent pounding on his kitchen table.

And Ms. Piggee is another one. She didn't buy all

the tickets for all the events. Nothing ever happened to her.

Her deputy didn't coerce her. She didn't testify that anybody

told her or threatened her that she was going to be laid off,

and she didn't have any complaints about Mrs. Shelton

whatsoever.

Same thing with Warrien Poole. Warrien Poole was in

a completely different area, and he talked about Steven Hunter.

Now, do we have any idea if there was any relationship at all

between Mrs. Shelton and Steven Hunter? No, we don't. We

don't know what Steven Hunter thought. We don't know what he

did. All we know is what other people say he did or said, and

none of what Steven Hunter did or said had anything at all to

do with Mrs. Shelton.

Warrien Poole, as we discussed earlier, recommended

against hiring Elena Lynch. He said she was overqualified,

bored, and troublesome. Certainly, it was easier for Hunter to

say that she wasn't a team player than to admit that Mr. Poole

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was right and he was wrong.

That's a mistake. It should say 2014, not 2013.

Let's talk about the other evidence, and I won't

belabor it. Listen to the recordings of the meetings that

happened, the first one on September 26th that happened during

the lunch hour and the other one that happened -- I think it's

T4 in your tab -- that occurred after work.

And if you listen to not just the clips, you'll have

the -- if you want them, you'll have the disks that have the

entire conversation. Listen to those and get a feeling for how

those meetings went and what the tenor of the meetings were and

what subjects were being talked about beyond these four to

two-minute clips out of two and a half hours of discussion.

You will see that there was nothing ever decided and

there's been no evidence, no matter how people vented or

expressed their frustrations about people not participating in

fundraisers, there was no action to follow up on any of the

things that were said. Nobody came in here and testified,

"Yeah, sure enough, after this meeting happened, my supervisor

asked me to go to lunch and tried to get me to buy tickets."

Or, "Yeah, sure enough, when I was on my way to the car after

work, I was stopped by another deputy, and that deputy said,

'Come on, help us out. We need to buy tickets.'"

In fact, after the EPIC meeting in which

Mrs. Shelton is asking the deputies to help, they had one of

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their worst years ever in terms of participation. Nobody did

anything. And you know that because you know Stafford Garbutt,

when he was going around recording people, they have a

conversation about it. Yeah, nobody's -- nobody's buying

tickets this year. But there isn't a followup conversation

that says, "Oh, so we're going to go threaten to lay them off,

fire them, take away their benefits, anything like that." No.

None of that happened.

What people say in venting to each other in meetings

about how they're frustrated about the things they can't do and

wish they could do that aren't going to be done, you know, that

doesn't mean without evidence that any of that ever happened.

And we don't have that evidence in this case, and we don't have

it because it didn't happen.

Computers documents, another thing. Now, you know

Mrs. Shelton's computer was not only her computer but had been

used by other people beforehand. And these documents, we went

through them in great detail to show you what was on the

computer and what wasn't on the computer. And, yes, there were

a couple of e-mails back and forth between she and

Rebecca Smith and a couple pictures and things she sent to be

approved and not approved.

Now, using a common sense approach, does that

constitute -- if what's going on here -- okay. Say I open my

e-mail. Oh, it's from Rebecca. She sent me some work she's

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been doing on my campaign material. I open it up. Look at it.

Oh, that looks nice. She wants to know if I approve or not. I

send her an e-mail back, "Yeah, I approve." That takes all of,

what, 30 seconds? 40 seconds? On a lunch hour at a break, are

you going to think -- is the foremost thing in your mind going

to be, "Oh, I'm doing campaign work on company time"? No.

It's probably one of those things that went back quickly. She

just didn't even think about it.

If this was a conspiracy among all these people to

extort employees or take kickbacks and all that sort of thing,

don't you think you'd have a bit more on the computer than what

you have here. I mean, you have some blank forms. You have a

couple of pictures, and you have a couple of e-mails, and

that's it. There aren't e-mails between she and Mrs. Elgin.

There aren't e-mails between she and Mr. Hunter, between she

and Mr. Garbutt or Mr. Leslie or anybody else.

If there was really a conspiracy going on, if

Mrs. Shelton was really carrying on her campaign out of her

office, you'd expect to see a whole lot more than this.

It's the same thing with items found in her office.

When they showed you that yesterday, it was like, "Oh, well

there was this folder in Mrs. Shelton's desk that said Ethel's

stuff." And inside the folder that said Ethel's stuff was

Ethel's stuff, not surprisingly.

How many times have you carried stuff back and forth

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 119

with you if you know you're going to be someplace after work,

if you have been working on something at home and you want to

bring it to work or if you've been working on something over

your lunchtime and want to take it home, you have those things

that you carry with you. This wasn't files in a Calumet

Township filing box or anything else like that. This was a

folder clearly marked Ethel's stuff.

And these boxes here, ladies and gentlemen, most of

which come from the storage room and most of which contain

documents that are really old, that's not evidence that there

is ongoing campaign work. They had campaign headquarters but

for a limited time every year. And in the meantime, you have

to put all the junk somewhere, so they put it in the storage

room. And you heard Mrs. Shelton testify that she talked to

Mary Elgin and said, "You got to get this stuff out of here.

Take it home. Do something with it." She's a pack rat,

Mary Elgin. She keeps everything. She stores everything. And

she should have kept it somewhere else, but she didn't. That's

not evidence that Ethel Shelton was conspiring with her to

violate or commit fraud or anything else.

The employee handbook, you can look at it.

Government -- the judge's instruction 43 says you can look at

it to see if it helps you to decide whether Mrs. Shelton had an

intent to defraud anyone or not. And I would suggest you can

look through that entire book and come to the conclusion that

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 120

it doesn't help you at all: One, because it's not clear; two,

because it's not law; three, because it contains no law; and it

doesn't have any bearing on whether Mrs. Shelton intended to

defraud anyone.

The attendance records I encourage you to look at.

And the two photos that you were showed with respect to the car

on the street and Mrs. Shelton getting into her car, I don't

think they help you one way or another, and I'm not even really

sure why they wasted the time and energy taking them. They

certainly don't show that Mrs. Shelton is involved in any kind

of illegal activity.

Who is she? You know who she is, not only because

you've heard from people that have known her for all her life

or all of their lives but because she testified. And I'm sure

that you have made your own conclusions about her testimony and

ability her character as a result of her decision to come

before you and tell you her version of events. Family and

friends, community, church, union, politics, and work, these

are the things that are important to her and have always been

important to her.

She worked for Mary Elgin as a secretary. She

worked as a finance clerk. You would think from the way this

case has been conducted that Mrs. Shelton was Mary Elgin.

Sharon Cummings, a contemporary of Ms. Shelton, came here.

They met through children and then work. She's a contemporary.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 121

She's in the same generation. And how did she describe

Mrs. Shelton? Loyal, honest, and a person of integrity. And

she probably could have gone on at great length if she had been

able to do so, and they're still friends today.

The next generation -- similar generation,

Diane Bates, around the same time. Single mom together.

Worked at the steel mill. Mrs. Bates is a little woman, but

she packs a powerful personality. She described Mrs. Shelton

as a champion in working on behalf of other people, and she

said she would trust Mrs. Shelton with her life. Now, we can

all use our own experience and our common sense and know that

there aren't very many people -- and maybe there are very many

people. But in my personal case, there's not very many people

about whom you would say that.

And Bishop Norman Hairston has known her since she

was a kid, involved with the family, involved with the

pastoring in their church. It's true, like he said, that good

people can do bad things. But Mrs. Shelton was a good person

who didn't do bad things. Mrs. Shelton has spent her whole

life trying to help other people be good, be better, be

productive.

And you know that because you heard from her

great-niece, Jocelyn Brown. She raised Jocelyn Brown, or

helped to raise Jocelyn Brown, and her siblings when their

mother was having difficulties on at least two different

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 122

occasions. And Jocelyn Brown is another one who worked at the

township. Not only did she start off working in the kids

program, but she worked eventual as a general assistance

department case manager, over 1300 cases. She bought tickets

or she didn't buy tickets. She said she bought them the first

time around to see what it was all about and didn't after that.

And she didn't testify -- and couldn't testify because it

didn't happen -- that anyone bothered her, that her deputy or

her supervisor wanted her to buy tickets.

And Rebecca Smith did Ethel Shelton's campaign

designs for her when Ethel ran her campaign. You saw the

stationery. Ethel used her personal address, her personal

phone number, her personal data, and her personal person to run

her own campaign. Mrs. Shelton was the beginning, the end, and

the middle. There were discussions about working together with

Mary and with Alex and all that sort of thing, but that stuff

never happened.

What happened was Mary Elgin put three campaign

posters on headquarters, including Alex and Mrs. Shelton, that

neither one of them asked for and then didn't do very much at

all to support them financially. Mrs. Shelton paid for her own

campaign with savings she and her husband earned because that's

the kind of person she is. Once Mary Elgin made it clear to

her that she wasn't going to support her, she could have said,

"I'm not running then. I'm done." But Mrs. Shelton is the

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 123

kind of person that if she agrees to do something, if she makes

a commitment, she's going to follow through on that commitment

even if it costs her money. It cost her her own money, and she

lost the election.

The interesting thing about her character witnesses

is that they come from all generations and different parts of

Mrs. Shelton's life, but they all come to the same conclusion

about her, that she is a person of honor and integrity and

honesty and decency. That she is a good person.

And why do we bring character witnesses? We bring

character witnesses because you don't know Mrs. Shelton, and

Mrs. Shelton testified. And you have to have a basis for

evaluating whether what Mrs. Shelton says to you is the truth

or not to truth. And it is very hard to decide that with a

person you don't know.

But when you have character witnesses who have known

a person for decade you can say, "Well, okay. These people

have known her for 50 years, for 40 years, for all their life,

and they feel this way. Let me take that into account when I

decide whether I believe her or not."

She answered tough questions. She answered all the

questions, and I'm sure that you all have other questions that

you would like to ask. But fundamentally what she told you was

that she never agreed to engage in illegal conduct, that she

did not agree to engage in bribery. She didn't agree to engage

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 124

in kickbacks, and she didn't gain anything out of this. And as

far as the evidence that's been presented here, neither did

Mary Elgin. Neither did anybody in this so-called conspiracy.

The Calumet Township Trustee's Office was a small

office, and like any small shop, a lot of times people take on

a variety of different roles inside or outside. And it would

have been much better if Mary Elgin had maintained a campaign

headquarters and kept all her stuff in the campaign

headquarters all year round. We don't even know what was in

the campaign headquarters because it wasn't searched and most

of the stuff that's here is old storage junk.

Now, there's a couple of instructions I want to

bring to your attention. One is that even if you think that

maybe Mary Elgin did something wrong, maybe Mrs. Shelton was

involved in something that Mary Elgin did so -- she because she

was her friend and because she was her employee, she was

involved too. Not permissible. A person's association with

someone who did something wrong is not enough to find that they

also did something wrong.

And it's not enough to show that anyone participated

or agreed to participate in a conspiracy, let alone a

conspiracy to do something illegal. If the defendant acted in

good faith, then he or she lacked the intent to join a

conspiracy, and a defendant doesn't have to prove his or her

good faith.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 125

Mrs. Shelton came to talk to you and told you that

she did her work in good faith. She believed that what she was

doing was within the bounds of the law and that she did not

intend to defraud anyone or to take money from anyone or to be

involved in kickbacks or bribery. If she had good faith, she

lacked the intent to defraud. In good faith she had an

abundance.

The only just result in this case for Mrs. Shelton

is a finding of not guilty, and we're confident that when you

have had a chance to re-review any of the evidence that you'd

like to catch up on and had a chance to discuss it with one

another, you will come do the same conclusion.

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, would you want to

take a break at this time?

(The jury collectively responded in the affirmative.)

THE COURT: Okay. We'll take a short break. We'll

try 15 minutes. Get back when you can get back. Same

admonition as always: Don't talk to anybody else about this

case. Don't let anybody talk to you, and don't talk to each

other about the case yet until it's submitted to you. We'll

take a 15-minute break.

(Jury out at 1:23 p.m.)

THE COURT: About 15 minutes or so.

(Recess had at 1:24 p.m., and proceedings resumed in open

court at 1:43 p.m.)

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT SHELTON Vol. 10, Page 126

THE COURT: Are both sides ready for the jury to be

brought in?

MS. GAMBINO: We are.

MS. LERNER: Yes, Your Honor.

MR. ROGERS: Judge, one quick question. I think I

know the answer. The Indictment is going back, is it not?

THE COURT: The revised Indictment, yes.

MR. ROGERS: Okay.

THE COURT: Bring the jury in.

MS. LERNER: Your Honor, has a copy of the revised

Indictment been circulated? I don't know that we've seen it.

THE COURT: I don't know. It hasn't gone back. It

should be in that bunch of stuff.

MR. ROGERS: I'm assuming that the statute it refers

to and is printed is going to stay the same.

THE COURT: There was really only two statutes in

this case.

MR. ROGERS: Right.

THE COURT: I don't know if we print out the statute

or not. We give an instruction on the statutes. Whether the

full statute is printed out, I'm not sure. It's what you saw

last night.

MR. ROGERS: It's in the Indictment.

THE COURT: Yeah, you're right about that. Just

make sure the Indictment goes back. There's a lot of stuff in

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 127

this case.

(Jury in at 1:45 p.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

Mr. Rogers.

MR. ROGERS: Thank you.

CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER

MR. ROGERS: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

I guess I'm in the unenviable position of being the third

person you have to listen to, to drone on and on. I guess it's

like one of these big old Italian weddings I used to go to when

my relatives were getting married, and all you can think of is,

"Oh, my gosh, isn't this thing over yet?" So bear with me.

As you know, this is my opportunity to speak on

behalf of Alex Wheeler. What I say is not evidence, what the

government says is not evidence, and what Ms. Gambino says is

not evidence. Evidence is what you see and hear from the

witness stand and the reasonable inferences that you can draw

from it.

Now, I like to think I take pretty careful notes,

but if I say something that you disagree with, I'm not trying

to mislead you. I'm not trying to pull a fast one on you. It

just may be that my recollection is different from yours.

Yours is what counts. Mine doesn't count.

So I'd like to take a minute and talk to you about

this whole situation. You're members of a jury. You are here

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 128

because the Constitution gives every defendant the right to be

tried by a jury of his or her peers. And that's real important

because on one side we've got the government, and I mean the

government. And the government's got a whole lot of resources

to bring against a defendant. And the defendant only has this

courtroom, and standing between Alex Wheeler and the government

is the jury. They have to get through you and convince each

and every one of you beyond a reasonable doubt that he's

guilty.

A couple hundred years ago this system was formed

and I believe it works well. I believe it works very well.

And every year I do this, I think it works even better because

I see it day in and day out; so, thank you, ladies and

gentlemen.

If you will give me the kindness, I guess, of

listening to me, I'm going to tell you what I think this case

is about and what I think the evidence shows and what the

evidence doesn't show.

Now, after about -- let me see. The jury got picked

-- you folks got picked on Monday. Tuesday, Wednesday we had

testimony. Along about Thursday I was thinking about bringing

a little sign, put it right here, that says, "He ain't

Mary Elgin." That's what this case has been about, Mary Elgin.

Mary Elgin and Steven Hunter and what they've been doing. I

would say that both of these defendants are what's called

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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collateral damage, and I don't believe that's what the evidence

shows, that they're guilty.

Let's talk about this. The judge just gave you

instructions, and I want to talk to you about a couple of them

because I think they're very important. And when you go back

into the jury room, you're going to get a copy of what's called

the Indictment. Those are the charges that the government

brought.

And remember what the instructions say, what the

government says, they are not trying to prove that Alex Wheeler

is guilty of wire fraud and honest services fraud, and I don't

think they have, but they're trying to prove that they're part

of a conspiracy, this big agreement. So as long as they

allege, the government, that this is a conspiracy, well, if

Alex didn't do anything and Mary Elgin did, therefore, Alex is

guilty.

It only works if you folks believe that the

government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that there was

a conspiracy. If you say no conspiracy, no charges, no

convictions. They have to prove a conspiracy.

And you were read the jury instructions, and there

was one instruction you didn't get. That instruction would be,

ladies and gentlemen, if the government says it's true, it's

true. Why? Because the government says it's true. Doesn't

work that way. But to listen to Ms. Lerner, it's true because

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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she says it's true. And she's just doing her job, and she's a

fine lawyer, and I'm not disparaging her in any way, just as I

hope I'm doing my job. But just because the government says,

"This is the way it is," doesn't mean it's the way it is. It's

what you folks think it is. It's what you folks say it is, not

the government.

Let me show you what you will see in the

government's Indictment, just a paragraph I'm going to ask you

to look at. Can we have that for the jury? Oh, it's on.

Okay.

And let me zoom in on this a little bit. It says

that the defendants knowingly and unlawfully combined,

conspired, and agreed to commit the following offense against

the United States, wire fraud, having devised and intended to

devise a scheme and an artifice -- to what? To defraud and for

obtaining money and property by means of materially false and

fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises. It goes

on to say for the purpose of executing such scheme. So a

scheme to defraud for obtaining money, property, by means of

materially false and fraudulent pretenses.

Who obtained money by means of materially false and

fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises? Who did

that? That's the statute that they violated according to the

government.

Who devised a scheme to defraud for obtaining money

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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by means of materially false and fraudulent pretenses,

representations, and promises? Who did it? Who did that?

What fraudulent misrepresentations were made? What materially

false representations were made? I don't hear any. Who did

that? Again, a conspiracy.

Next count, honest services wire fraud. Engaging in

wire fraud by devising a scheme, an artifice, to defraud and

deprive the CTTO and the citizens of Calumet Township of their

right to the honest and faithful services of the defendants

through the solicitation and payment of bribes and kickbacks in

the form of campaign ticket payments and forced political work

and the concealment of material information.

Who took a bribe in this case? And like Ms. Gambino

said, who took a kickback? No one. Again, I agree with

Mrs. Shelton's lawyer. Kickback, I believe, is somebody in a

position of power, the Trustee maybe, to award a contract for

printing, maintenance, whatever; and then they go to the person

and say, "Hey, you got the job. I want to money. Give me ten

percent back. Give me cash money." Didn't happen.

Who's the bribe? You bribe somebody in order to do

something for you. Who paid a bribe to who? To Alex Wheeler?

Did he make any money off this? If he did, I must have missed

it because I didn't hear about it. I didn't see it. I don't

think he got a bribe, and I don't think he got a kickback.

Collateral damage. You throw enough mud at

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Mary Elgin and Steven Hunter, and something might stick on

Alex. That's why we're here. Something might stick on Alex.

But I would suggest to you that hasn't happened. This has been

somewhat of a long trial, and I'm guessing that maybe some of

you -- I might be wrong -- at the end of last week, beginning

of this week, are saying, "You know, we haven't heard much

about Alex Wheeler. Maybe this next witness is going to bring

in the dirt. Going to bring in the evidence to take it home.

Going to bring in the evidence that's going to convince me that

he is guilty of the crime charged."

Okay. That witness didn't do it. How about the

next witness? Well, that witness didn't do it. What about the

next witness? Nah, that one didn't do it either. And then all

the sudden the government stands up and says, "We rest. We

rest. We have no further evidence." Then you say, "Okay.

That's all you got?" And I believe that's the situation here.

So how did this whole thing start? It started with

Stafford Garbutt, and you heard him testify for a couple of

days. I would say he's quite impressed with himself. I think

Mrs. Shelton says he's -- Stafford's always got to be the

smartest guy in the room. And I believe, as he indicated --

well, first he said, "Well, I wanted to go because it just

isn't right. What's going on at the Calumet Township Trustee's

Office just isn't right."

Well, he ought to know because he's the one that

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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started it, and he's the one that conspired with Mary Elgin to

literally steal the taxpayers blind. Then he said, "I also

read about this Mr. Van Til, a Lake County officeholder that

got in trouble with the government for doing some things that

he should not have done." And I believe that's the real

reason. He got scared because he knew what he and Mary Elgin

and Steven Hunter had been doing, and if the government comes

knocking on their door, the three of them are in big trouble.

So he tries to get an investigation started. How do

we know it's Van Til? Remember, Agent Holbrook of the FBI told

you that, that Mr. Garbutt said he was there because of

Van Til. So he can tell you -- Mr. Garbutt can tell you all

day long that he was trying to do the right thing, but he was

trying to save his hind end. That's what he was doing, in case

the government comes knocking.

There's an old saying: First one on the bus gets a

free ride. So he walks in with some documents that he thinks

the FBI is going to be interested in, gives it to him, and

within two weeks he signs up. You're an informant. You're a

confidential human source. I always call them snitches. It's

easier, but confidential human source sounds better.

So in two weeks he becomes a confidential human

source. And to hear him talk, they sat down and talked to him,

gave him one or more recording devices and said, "Go get them.

Go record them." That's what he told you. Remember? And he

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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said, "They left it up to me," me, Stafford, "to decide who I'm

going to record, when I'm going to record, how I'm going to

record, and why I'm going to record it."

There may be some truth to that because remember

what Agent Holbrook said. Stafford would bring the recording

device back to him. He wouldn't listen to it. He would have

to turn it in so it could be downloaded and examined and things

of that nature. He didn't listen to the recording. Don't you

think that he should have and shouldn't he have said, "Well,

wait a minute, I think you need to do this. See if you can get

a little bit of evidence about this. How about this person?

Let's go -- let's see what this person's got to say."

And, remember, Stafford is in control of the

recording device. He picks and chooses what he's going to do.

So what does he do? I understand he made over 100 recordings.

I believe that's what Agent Holbrook said, over 100 recordings.

And each one of those recordings could be very short, could be

real long, hour and a half, two hours, something like that.

But what do we hear Alex Wheeler on? Two of them,

the stick up the head and the other one said he's going to

participate 100 percent. After that all -- and you've got to

believe that's the best they got on Alex Wheeler or you would

have heard it. Now, you remember him saying there was another

recording made in Alex Wheeler's office by Stafford but his

words were, "Didn't have any evidentiary value." In other

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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words, it didn't show Alex Wheeler doing anything. It didn't

show him being guilty of anything. Had no evidentiary value so

you didn't hear it.

Now, I believe -- it's my belief that every agent

that works an informant, number one, has to do an investigation

on him or should do an investigation on him to find out what

kind of person they are. Are they truthful? Number two, you

have to manage the informant. And you have to be in control of

the investigation as opposed to Mr. Garbutt.

I asked Agent Holbrook: Why didn't you tell

Stafford to go down and talk to Alex Wheeler? And maybe he did

and that recording that we didn't hear is a product of that.

But, again, how long was Stafford working as an informant? How

long did he have the recording device? I think a long time.

So the agent could have said, "We want to find out if

Mr. Wheeler has done what you say he does."

So all you got to do is say, "Stafford, go in and

strike up a conversation with him. You're a smart guy. Play

on his ego a little bit. Why don't you go in there and close

the door and say, 'Alex, did you read that about George Van Til

in the newspaper? He got indicted. Ain't that the same thing

we've been doing? I mean, look what you've been doing. You've

been working in your office getting paid for 40 hours and 35 of

it is campaign time. Aren't you afraid?' Something along

those lines and see what Alex Wheeler says."

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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He didn't do it. And I would submit to you if, as

Stafford said, he's in charge of the investigation, the reason

he didn't do it is because he knew that Alex wasn't doing that

and he wasn't going to get anything.

But the conversation that he did record with Alex,

in Alex's office didn't provide any evidentiary value. So I

think a reasonable conclusion would be that Stafford did go in

there and did try to get Alex to talk but he wouldn't do it.

He didn't do it. He didn't say anything.

Why? It's my position, and only my position, he

didn't do anything. He didn't do anything wrong. There's no

conspiracy. Now, if you're going to convict Alex Wheeler of

these two conspiracy charges, you have to agree that there, in

fact, was a conspiracy.

So I ask you, when did the conspiracy start? How

did it start? Who said what? What's the evidence? You -- the

government just can't say there's a conspiracy. Believe it

because we said it. That's what they are doing here. What

evidence did you hear of Alex being involved in a conspiracy?

I would submit to you none.

And these trials, in some aspects and some regards,

are a little bit theatrics. Okay. And I would say, folks,

take a look at this evidence. It goes from here to there.

Look at all these boxes. Man, the government really hauled in

the evidence. Must be guilty. Except for these (indicating).

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 137

Here's what they got out of Alex Wheeler's office. I don't

think they got Government's 28, 33. They didn't get any of

this stuff out of his office, but it sure looks like there's a

heck of a lot of evidence there.

So what do we got in Alex Wheeler's -- from his

office? It says desk: Something about Mary Elgin. Okay. So

how did that get on his desk? Where on his desk was it? What

was it there for? If that's all they got, that proves a

conspiracy? That proves a conspiracy for honest services?

Got these envelopes. 2011, primary election. This

was in 2014. What does primary election candidate info from

2011 prove that he's in a conspiracy, that he's doing political

work? It doesn't. He could have brought that in one day,

decided he was going to take a look at it maybe on his lunch

hour, maybe not. I don't know. Speculation on my part. Set

it there and forgot about it.

I asked Holbrook: Where did you get those two

envelopes? I don't know. I wasn't there to search

Alex Wheeler's office. I don't know where it came from. What

was in his desk drawer? Something that said Alex's stuff. Is

that a felony to have something in your desk drawer at work

that may not relate to work?

What if Alex Wheeler -- let's say he was going to

Purdue Calumet here in Hammond studying for his MBA and he

brought some homework in the office in a textbook, and on his

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 138

lunch hour he was going to do some homework, maybe read the

book, and he left it there. The next day, the government

serves a search warrant and they find this stuff. Holy cow.

That's not related to Calumet Township Trustee's work. Is that

a felony? Is that a crime? No.

There is no evidence that has been presented to you

that Alex Wheeler did any political work on his computer in his

office on company time. As a matter of fact, the evidence has

been to the contrary, that Alex was not computer savvy. Who

told you that? I think Mr. Davis did, and I also think

Mr. Poole did. And, remember, Agent Holbrook said, "Well, the

government came in and imaged the computers of everybody." In

other words, they took an image of the computer.

They had the ability to go through that computer and

find out when these documents were put on the computer that

they found -- and I think it was a couple of things regarding

his campaign. Who put them on there. How it got on there.

Did it come as an e-mail? Did somebody send it to him?

Incidentally, they have a copy of one e-mail in

there. It's to Frederick C. Williams that Alex sent, and then

Mr. Williams sent it back to him, and then he sent it back to

Mr. Williams. And the government is interpreting that as a

request for a campaign picture. Well, if you look closely at

the e-mail, it shows that Mr. Williams is using his Purdue

University e-mail account. Maybe he'll get indicted. But it

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has nothing to do with a campaign, nothing. But that's their

mindset.

And, incidentally, if it came off of Alex Wheeler's

computer and it was an e-mail, did you ever hear any testimony

about how many e-mails were on Mr. Wheeler's computer and how

many they seized? He could have had a thousand e-mails. He

could have had 500 e-mails. Did they find one e-mail to

somebody at Purdue Cal? That, ladies and gentlemen, isn't

evidence of a conspiracy.

Now, I would like to go over some of these

instructions that the judge read to you, and I'm not going to

read them all over. I've just sort of highlighted a couple

things here. Jury instruction number 3: Each defendant is

presumed innocent of each of the charges, and this presumption

continues throughout the case including your deliberations.

When you're back in the jury room, the judge is

telling you to consider Alex Wheeler innocent. The government

has a burden of proving the defendant's guilt beyond a

reasonable doubt and this burden stays with the government

throughout the case. A defendant is never required to prove

his or her innocence, and a defendant is not required to

produce any evidence at all. Again, how can an individual

defendant match the resources of the federal government?

Number 10: A defendant has an absolute right not to

testify. The last sentence, you are not to even discuss it in

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 140

your deliberations because he has that right, and he's

exercised that right.

Judge has given you an instruction regarding

Stafford, the last part: You may give this witness's testimony

whatever weight you believe is appropriate, keeping in mind

that you must consider that testimony with caution and great

care. There is no other instruction for any other witness

along that lines.

Number 25: If a defendant performed acts that

advanced the crime but had no knowledge that the crime was

being committed or was about to be committed, those acts are

not sufficient by themselves to establish the defendant's

guilt. Further, a defendant's association with persons

involved in a crime or criminal scheme is not sufficient by

itself to prove his or her participation in the crime or

membership in the criminal scheme.

Just because Alex sat in political meetings or

deputy meetings doesn't make him part of the conspiracy. The

government has to prove that he was part of that conspiracy.

They just can't say, "Well, Alex is part of that conspiracy

because he has been at the Calumet Township Trustee's Office

since 2003, and he was Mary Elgin campaign manager." It

doesn't make him part of the conspiracy. What's the evidence?

Instruction number 30: In deciding whether a

particular defendant joined the charged conspiracy, you must

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 141

base your decisions only in what that defendant did or said.

To determine what the defendant did or said you may consider

the defendant's own words or acts. You may also use the words

or acts of other persons to help you decide what the defendant

did or said.

And the government is hanging their hat on the

recording where Alex is talking about a stick upside the head.

And, folks, I believe that has to be taken figuratively. You

know, there's been no evidence that Alex went around or anybody

else went around beating people on the head with a stack. I'll

get back to that in a minute.

Number 36, definition of kickback: Kickbacks

involve the exchange of a thing of value for official action by

a public official, in other words, a quid pro quo. What

official act did Alex do and what did he get for it? He didn't

get anything. And remember what Agent Holbrook said. I almost

fell out of my chair. He said, "No, there has been no quid pro

quo." He said that in his testimony. There was no quid pro

quo.

A kickback occurs when a public official demands,

solicits, or seeks, or asks for directly or indirectly

something of value from another person in exchange for being

induced to do or admit to do any action in violation of the

official duty and the act itself provides the source of the

funds to be kick backed. In other words, a kickback is a form

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 142

of bribery where the government official's actions and the

source of the funds to be paid to the public official.

Bribery? What did Alex Wheeler get out of this?

What's the official act? If you'll recall, I don't think there

was anybody from that witness stand that said Alex Wheeler was

in charge of layoffs; Alex Wheeler was in charge of firing;

Alex Wheeler had anything to do with layoffs; Alex Wheeler had

anything to do with firing. Anybody hear a witness get up

there and testify? I didn't.

But the government is saying, "Well, he was close to

Mary Elgin, you know, so maybe he had some influence. Maybe he

didn't." You cannot guess Alex Wheeler guilty. There has to

be evidence. It has to be able to go back in that jury room

and say this proves that there's a conspiracy. This proves

that there's a kickback. This proves that there's a bribery

scheme. How can you do that based on the evidence that you

heard here?

Instruction number 37: It says in this case the

government has alleged that the specific matter is, number one,

retaining or not laying off employees; and, number two,

favorable treatment in job duties and responsibilities. What

witness came in here and said Alex Wheeler had anything to do

with laying off employees? What witness came in here and said

Alex Wheeler had anything to do with favorable treatment in job

duties and responsibilities? Nobody did.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 143

Well, the government will say, "Well, he didn't have

to because Mary Elgin did it. Steven Hunter did it. Because

they're part of the conspiracy." And my question I would ask

you to think about asking is, what conspiracy? What have you

proved?

Stafford was wearing a wire. Why didn't he just

stand up in a political meeting and say, "Okay, folks. Are we

all in agreement if somebody doesn't buy tickets, we're going

to lay them off? We're going to fire them. Are you on board

with that, Alex? Are you on board with that, this deputy, that

deputy?" If everybody said, "Yeah, we'll do it," conspiracy.

Don't have that. Don't have any of that. As to

wire fraud, a person acts with intent to defraud if he or she

acts knowingly with the intent to deceive or cheat the victim

or victims in order to cause a gain of money or property to

himself, herself, or another, or the potential loss of money or

property to another. What did Alex do?

As to honest services wire fraud, a person acts with

intend to defraud if he acts knowingly with the intent to

deceive or cheat the victim or victims in order to deprive

another of the intangible rights of honest services. What did

he do? I guess it could be argued that Alex is a victim

because he had to buy five tickets. He had to pony up 500

bucks. Sell them. Eat them. Buy them.

I believe the testimony was in 2003 there was about

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200 employees in the Calumet Township Trustee's Office, and

then it got whittled down to about 80 because of the decrease

in property tax revenue. Now, we have to assume that some of

those individuals worked for Alex. How many? There was no

testimony to that effect. Couldn't the government have brought

one, two, three prior employees in? That's all they had to do.

Put them on the witness stand.

Did Alex Wheeler hand deliver you some tickets? Did

he tell you if you didn't buy them, you're going to be fired;

you're going to be laid off? Surely, if he's part of this

conspiracy and surely if she's doing this, they can find

somebody. One person testified that she worked for Alex,

Linda Collins-Brown. And what did she have to say about it?

No good scoundrel? Horrible person? Twisted my arm?

Threatened to fire me? No. She said he was a fine gentleman.

If that's the best they have from Alex's former

employees, that he's a fine gentleman, where's these other

people that he must have coerced, intimidated, defrauded, made

promises to, false misrepresentations? You saw nobody from

that witness stand that said that about Alex Wheeler. And,

ladies and gentlemen, what has not been given to you speaks

volumes. If they had it, they would have bought it in. If

they had somebody that was prepared to do that, they would have

brought them in. Didn't happened.

Now, there has been a lot of red herrings flying

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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around here, and a red herring is something used to distract

you. One of those red herrings is the employee handbook. Why,

they violated the employee handbook. Shame on them. How dare

they. Wouldn't it have been interesting if Mary Elgin, instead

of having the EPIC trivia contest, would have said, "Okay.

We're going to have a quiz on the employee handbook." How many

people do you think would have known what was in that employee

handbook, word for word, section by section? Nobody.

And the judge has instructed you and you'll have --

reading only part of this: Violation of policies of the

employee handbook should not be considered as implying a

violation of a federal criminal law. You may not convict the

defendant of any of the counts alleged that he or she engaged

in a conspiracy to commit a scheme to defraud simply on the

basis of the conclusion that they may have violated the

policies of the handbook.

It is not a crime. Now, you might be able to be

discharged, have your pay docked, suspended, reduced your

position, but it's not a crime. It's not a law to violate an

employee handbook. But I think some people might have thought

that after the way it was paraded around by the government, but

it's not.

Now, let's look at the stick up the head. This

comes out of Government's Exhibit T1. And Page 16, the very

bottom, it starts AW, Alex Wheeler: "I'm going to tell you

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what it's really about. People don't see no consequences if

they buy them or not." And he's stating a true fact.

There are no consequences. You cannot force anybody

to buy tickets. If somebody else is suggesting that, okay,

that's on them, not on Alex. And when a new public official

comes in, they can't clean house and fire everybody; otherwise,

they'd be in court.

So the paragraph that the government is beating on

says, "There's nothing you can say. Ain't nothing I can say.

You -- you got to hit them upside the head with a stick."

That's not legal.

"I told Mary the first year she got here, I said,

'You gave them a year, Mary. You got to take the stick out and

bust some damn heads, if you know what I mean. You can sound

it any way you want it to sound.'"

So when Mary first got there, that was 2003 and that

was ten years roughly, give or take a few years, probably when

he made that statement. "But if you don't, people will know

there ain't no consequences. There ain't nothing anybody can

do in this room and say to them if there ain't no consequences.

I mean, that's what life is."

I interpret that -- you interpret that any way you

want -- Alex is saying there ain't no consequences. There's

nothing we can do to these people. So if Mary Elgin or

somebody else is urging them to get tough, do something to sell

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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tickets, Alex is saying, "Ain't go consequences. Can't do

anything."

Further down: "If there ain't no consequences, if

Stafford know I ain't going to be able to do nothing to him,

whether it gets him or not, Stafford say, 'What the hell. I

ain't going to buy them. What you gonna do?'" He's stating a

fact.

And then on Page 18, the next page, I believe this

is Alex Wheeler: "Stafford, it's the way you can deal with it

right here. I'm not talking about the law. What I'm saying,

if you know that there ain't never gonna happen to you legally,

no other way, then I don't see no way for you to force anybody

to do any damn thing." So I'm gathering that Stafford, at some

point, is making the issue. You can't coerce nobody if you

ain't got no mechanism to coerce them with.

And then Alex says: "You don't want to go back in

the past." But the trustee told him that. Don't go back into

the past, and I would submit to you that's Alex saying, "You

can't go back into the past." Number one, it's illegal.

Number two, you don't want to do it because Alex wrote a

campaign letter on behalf of Mary Elgin -- it was referred to

in the government's case -- that says -- and this is

Government's Exhibit 60 right there where he's writing a

letter. And, actually, I believe the testimony was he didn't

write it, Stafford did, but he signed off on it. But the date,

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 148

October 28, 2003, where he says basically Mary Elgin did away

with the two percent club.

Now, much has also been made of Government's Group

Exhibit 52. These are the time sheets. But they're really not

the time sheets. Because, again, it says right down at the

bottom, "I attest that the recorded time is the actual time I

signed in and out of the Calumet Township Trustee's Office,

which is recorded for security and insurance purposes only."

Now, if Alex doesn't put his actual time there, is

that a violation of the law? No. He gets paid 40 hours a

week. If, let's say, he put in 10 hours one day, 12 hours

another day, 6 hours another day, is he doing anything wrong?

Don't think so because there was testimony from individuals,

and I think Gladys Miller may have been one of them, that they

in finance do the actual time sheets. And those are the green

sheets that have been marked and made an exhibit.

So what's the benefit to him of doing it? He's a

deputy. There has been testimony from others that they can set

their own hours. They can do what they want. They're still

going to get paid for 40 hours a week. And if, let's say, he's

out of the office for a campaign meeting for two hours and

let's say over a period of time that he has accumulated 10, 15,

20 hours of accumulated overtime -- he's not going to paid for

that.

And the government says, "Oh, my gosh, he keeps

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 149

track of every minute, and he wants that comp time." I would

just ask you to look at some place -- I think it's in green

writing -- it's not him doing that. It's somebody in the

finance department doing it. He's not asking for the comp

time. And I believe that Ethel Shelton said that oftentimes

Alex was one of the last ones to leave before the building was

locked up at 8:00 or 8:30, something like that.

So if that's the case, what was Alex Wheeler doing?

Was he catching up on his township time? Was he working on his

political campaign? How would he be working on his political

campaign at the office other than perhaps using the office

computer? There wasn't anything on there that he prepared.

And if there was, because of the image that the government took

of his computer, there would be a forensic computer expert

coming in saying, "Well, it appeared to me at 7:30 p.m. on this

date, he's using the township computer to do this, to work on

campaign materials." Nobody came.

So what do they do with that image? Did somebody

examine it? We don't know. Didn't hear about. Did they

examine it and say, "Nothing's here. Toss it. Erase it"? No.

I believe a reasonable inference that you can make is there was

nothing, nothing of any evidentiary value on that computer.

Now, I would ask you when you make your decision

regarding Alex Wheeler to judge him not on what he might have

said in one recorded meeting. And, again -- I'm sorry. There

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were two recorded meeting where he said, "I'll give 100 percent

effort," on his part.

Judge him on what he did. Judge him on the evidence

that people came in and testified under oath and said, "This is

what Alex Wheeler did." There's been inferences that he's a

deputy; therefore, he handed out tickets. He gave his

employees tickets and threatened them or misrepresented.

What's the evidence of that? I heard evidence all

over the place. One, that Johnnie Barbie, who didn't testify,

from the mail room delivered the tickets. Put them on people's

chairs. Put them on people's desks. Is that true? That's

what individuals told you. Johnnie Barbie didn't tell you

that.

Okay. Other people say, "No, I got the tickets from

my deputy in an envelope with my name on it." I'm not aware of

anybody saying Alex Wheeler gave them directly a ticket with

their name on it.

Did anybody come in here and say that Alex Wheeler

threatened them to buy tickets? Did anybody come in here and

say that Alex Wheeler pocketed the money from the tickets? Did

anybody come in here and say that Alex Wheeler falsely

misrepresented anything? I didn't hear any. But there's a lot

of mud being thrown.

James Leslie, he's the guy that's printing off the

posters. I don't remember seeing him up there. But he had

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 151

something from Alex Wheeler or about Alex Wheeler on his

computer, right? Therefore, that means Alex did what? Don't

know. How did he get it there? Did Stafford take it down to

him? Did Mary Elgin take it down to him because she wanted his

smiling face on the poster at the campaign headquarters? We

don't know.

The government has the burden of proof. If James

Leslie did all these campaign chores on government time, where

is the evidence of that? And, most importantly, what ties

Alex Wheeler to that? Stafford supposedly did all of these

things, but I don't believe he presented you with any evidence,

concrete or otherwise, that Alex did anything.

But yet he was in control of the microphone. He was

in control of the recordings. He was in control of the

investigation basically. And I would think with this being a

criminal case and Alex Wheeler being a defendant, that the

government witnesses are going to come in and say things that

are not complimentary to him, that are not exonerating -- what

would I call it -- exculpatory for him. I didn't hear any.

He's a fine gentleman.

I don't doubt that there was all kinds of chicanery

going on in the Calumet Township Trustee's Office. But I would

say the leaders of the pact would have been, and the conspiracy

could be certainly made, for Mary Elgin, Stafford, and

Steven Hunter. The government is trying to draw Alex into

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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CLOSING ARGUMENT - DEFENDANT WHEELER Vol. 10, Page 152

that, and I don't think they have been successful. That's your

question. That's your answer to give us. Has the government

been successful in bringing Alex into two conspiracies?

I'm just about done. When I go -- when you go back

there, I would ask you to pose this question to yourself and to

others. What -- at what time did Alex join this conspiracy?

And what's the proof? What is the proof that Alex ever joined

the conspiracy? What's the proof? I would suggest there is

none.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is an awesome

responsibility to sit in judgment of another person, and I

would ask you to take that responsibility very heavy, and I'm

sure you will. It appears from the evidence that Alex Wheeler

has led an upstanding life. Had he not, you would have heard

about it. That he worked, and he worked diligently for the

Calumet Township Trustee's Office.

I believe the evidence is that he never did anything

wrong, maybe a minor hiccup here or there by having something

on the floor or maybe on the desk or in the desk from years

ago, but I don't believe that rises to the level of a felony of

conspiracy.

So on behalf of Alex Wheeler, I would like to thank

you. I would ask you, please, follow the judge's instructions.

Hold the government to their burden of proof. Remember your

obligation to consider Alex Wheeler innocent, innocent here in

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 153

this courtroom and innocent back in the jury room, unless and

until the government proves him guilty beyond a reasonable

doubt. And, ladies and gentlemen, I don't think the government

has come close to that burden. Thank you.

THE COURT: Ladies and gentlemen, do you want to

take a break? Are you ready to keep going?

(The jury collectively responded.)

THE COURT: Keep going. Okay. Counsel for the

government may proceed with rebuttal argument.

REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT

MR. ZANZI: Can you all hear me okay?

Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a long two weeks.

It has been a long day. I'm sure that you are tired of hearing

from the lawyers. I'm sure you're ready to start talking about

this case and making decisions.

It's been said repeatedly that the government bears

the burden of proof. We do. And because of that, I have to

respond to some things, so bear with me as I go through some of

the statements and arguments made by defense counsel.

First, I want to start off by putting this in

context, the case in context. You have heard testimony that

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler are good people. They led

honorable lives. They have friends who care about them and

respect them. None of that is in dispute. The government is

not alleging that.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 154

Something that was said by Ethel Shelton's character

witness, Pastor Norman Hairston -- I think one of the jurors

had posed the question: Can good people do bad things? And he

said yes.

This case is about whether or not the law was

violated and whether or not Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler

participated and joined in the conspiracy. That's all this

case is about. It's not about whether or not they've led

exemplary lives or all the things they had. It's not an attack

on their character. It is about holding government employees

accountable for their participation in an illegal conduct.

So I just want to put this in context because it's

about what was done here, ladies and gentlemen, and I want to

go through a couple of -- one thing I think has been confused

in the statements is what it is the government has to prove.

This is a conspiracy case. And you have heard all

the instructions, and I want to show them to you. I want to

show you what it is the government has to prove and doesn't

have to prove so that when you're sitting back in the jury

room, you understand what the burden is on the government and

what it isn't.

The jury instruction number 26 and 27 talk about

what the government has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

And it states these are the elements: That a conspiracy to

commit wire fraud or honest services wire fraud in Count 6

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 155

existed; that the defendant knowingly became a member of the

conspiracy with an intent to advance the conspiracy; and that

one of the conspirators, not necessary Ethel Shelton, not

necessarily Alex Wheeler, committed at least one overt act in

an effort to advance the goal or object of the conspiracy.

Did Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler join the

conspiracy? Did they do so? Did they knowingly become a

member of the conspiracy? And did they do that with intent to

advance the conspiracy? That's what the government has to

prove.

You are also getting instructions on the underlying

elements of -- this is, for example, honest services wire

fraud. And jury instruction number 32 is the elements of wire

fraud. Pay attention to the first paragraph of this, ladies

and gentlemen. The crime of conspiring to commit wire fraud is

different from the crime of wire fraud.

However, to help you decide whether the defendant

conspired to commit wire fraud, the elements of wire fraud and

honest services wire fraud are laid out here. So the

government does not have to prove that Ethel Shelton and

Alex Wheeler knowingly devised or participated in a scheme to

defraud; that they did so with intent to defraud; that the

scheme to defraud involved a materially false or fraudulent

pretense or any of this stuff happened.

Government does not have to prove these elements

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 156

beyond a reasonable doubt. They -- the government -- we have a

burden of proof to show that they joined -- knowingly joined a

conspiracy to commit these crimes.

So you've heard argument that, "Well, Mr. Wheeler

never threatened or coerced anyone. Alex Wheeler didn't do

this. Ethel Shelton didn't do this. Those are distractions.

Look at the elements the government has to prove on conspiracy.

Did they knowingly join the conspiracy with intent to advance

the conspiracy?

Arguments were made that Ethel Shelton and

Alex Wheeler didn't agree to join the unlaw conspiracy, or they

didn't know what they were doing was wrong. Well, the evidence

shows that they did know what they were doing was wrong. They

talked about it. They talked about breaking the law. They

talked about Van Til. Ethel Shelton met with Gladys Miller,

asked her to meet after hours at the annex to give her tickets

and talked about, "I'm not going to jail for anybody."

The way that they acted and what they did is

evidence that what they knew they were doing was wrong and

illegal. There were memos sent that you can't engage in

political activity on the public's dime. But do you need

somebody to tell you? Do you need a memo? Do you need a

handbook to know that you can't steal from the government?

That you can't do personal business, political business, on the

public's time?

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 157

They want you to believe that this was all in good

faith, that their intentions were good. Ethel Shelton and

Alex Wheeler had a history of being involved in politics, being

involved in union leadership, working on committees, knowing

what's right and wrong in the workplace. They knew exactly

what's right and wrong. Somewhere along the way, they forgot

that. They got involved in this conspiracy, and they forgot

that.

Jury instruction 29, Ethel Shelton -- you've heard

testimony from James Leslie and from Stafford Garbutt that

Ethel Shelton was involved in the beginning. Ethel Shelton

says that she was not. She says she was her best friend. She

says that she wasn't her best friend. It's very confusing what

she's saying. But the point is, is that for purposes of the

instruction, for purposes of your deliberation, for purposes of

becoming a member of the conspiracy, a person need not join it

at the beginning.

Whatever you believe -- whether you believe that

Ethel Shelton got involved from the beginning or in 2005 or

2006 when she became the executive secretary, if she joined it

at some point and the government has proved the elements that

she joined it knowingly and with intent to advance the

conspiracy, then she's a part of the conspiracy.

A person may become a member of a conspiracy even if

a person agrees to play only a minor part in the conspiracy.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 158

To run a campaign at a public office, Mary Elgin couldn't have

done that by herself. She needed people she could trust to do

it. And everyone played a different role. Some people played

minor roles. Some people played larger roles. That's not a

question. Even if they played a minor part in the conspiracy,

they agreed to join the conspiracy. If they knew they were

entering into the conspiracy, then -- and they intended to

advance the conspiracy, then they joined the conspiracy.

There are allegations made that there was no fraud.

The fraud was on the public, ladies and gentlemen. The fraud

was on the taxpayers. The public was expecting the people of

the Calumet Township Trustee's Office to do the work for the

poor, that the money that they were paying was solely going to

be used for the poor. And Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler say

that they personally didn't do anything fraud. Well, that's

not one of the elements of conspiracy.

I'll ask you to take a look again. I'm not going to

show you again. You've seen the payroll records many times.

Those payroll records are not just there for security.

Gladys Miller testified from the finance department, she's the

one who deals with the State Board of Accounts. This is a

public entity that has to keep accurate records. Why? Because

the State Board of Accounts is a check on a public entity to

know what's happening with the money the taxpayers are paying,

where it is going, what people are doing. That's a regulatory

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 159

agency. It's the only way that the Calumet Township Trustee's

Office can identify how people should be paid. That record

isn't just about security. There's a certification at the top.

Stating something falsely on there is a false

representation. And what it shows is it shows that they

weren't being honest. You've seen it numerous times. There's

been this argument over and over that Alex Wheeler was working

long hours and doing things for the job search works program.

Nobody knows -- there's no evidence in this case

about that, ladies and gentlemen. The only thing the evidence

shows is that Alex Wheeler was very meticulous about how he

recorded his time. There is a week in there, which we showed

you in evidence, where one day he clocks in at 9:00 o'clock.

The next day he clocks in at 9:05, same handwriting.

He was very careful about when he came in and when

he left. And someone being that careful would know, should

know, that when they're taking time they're claiming that

they're working when they're spending a two and a half hour

meeting or one and a half hour meeting at the north annex

discussing politics, that's not being truthful. That's not

telling the State Board of Accounts the truth. That's not

telling the public the truth. That's not honest work. We

don't know what he was doing, ladies and gentlemen, but we know

what he represented. We know that at least on those dates, on

October 3rd and September 26th, he wasn't being truthful about

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what he was doing.

Ladies and gentlemen, public service is a privilege,

not a right. When your salary is paid by the taxpayers, you

are accountable to the taxpayers, and public officials are not

entitled to anything. They are not entitled to do whatever

they want on the public's dime. They are not entitled to do

whatever they want with the public's property. They are not

entitled to re-election. They are not entitled to the

hard-earned money of public employees to give them a

competitive advantage.

What happens here, ladies and gentlemen, is Mary

Elgin got elected. She brought her friends and her close

advisors along with her. And whenever you believe that

Ethel Shelton became a part of this, she did become a part of

this. Her salary she testified was, I think, between 38,000

and 40,000 when she became an executive secretary. Gladys

Miller testified about her salary too. Gladys Miller has been

working at the township for how long and everything that she

does in terms of dealing with finance. She was an assistant

deputy. Ethel Shelton was making the same amount as her. Was

she providing the same services to run the operation for the

Calumet Township Trustee's Office?

Everybody benefitted from this. They kept their

jobs and stayed in power. This was all a scheme. It doesn't

have to be for Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler's personal gain.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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It could be for Mary Elgin's personal gain. The conspiracy can

be for that.

But they did benefit. The problem here, ladies and

gentlemen, is that they came into office and they abused the

office to keep themselves in power. You heard when I asked

Lamar Taylor when Mary Elgin first ran for office: Did you

solicit the employees of the Calumet Township Trustee's Office?

He said no. He didn't have access to it. Dozier Allen raised

money from the Calumet Township Trustee's Office with the two

percent club. But as soon as Mary Elgin came in, she used that

as a fundraising source.

And you saw the amounts of money that was coming in.

That's a competitive advantage from the employees that they had

no right to. If they want -- they're allowed to solicit

tickets from the employees, but mail it to their homes. Don't

give it to them in their office through their deputies.

They're not entitled to that money. And you heard

employees come in here and testify that they didn't want to pay

for that. What? Everyone just assumed that the employees

wanted to pay for this money, for these tickets? They want to

pay $11 or $22 each pay period to buy these tickets on the

salary they were making? Some of these employees had no

affiliation with Mary Elgin whatsoever. People like Gladys

Miller and Horace Clay, they're just trying to do their job.

That's all they're trying to do.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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Gladys Miller -- this is part of the system, the

expectation. Every single year she paid for the tickets. The

one time that she says, "I can't do it," 60 bucks for the

prayer brunch, she gets a call from Ethel Shelton. And she

says, "Do you want to have" -- this is not just scheduling a

meeting with Mary Elgin. Think of the context of that

conversation.

Gladys Miller was talking about explaining to

Ethel Shelton that she couldn't buy these tickets, and then in

the context of that: Do you want to schedule a meeting with

Mary Elgin to explain that to her? How do you think that makes

them feel? Where's the respect and dignity for the employee?

I don't know.

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler may have been

champions for union workers in the past, but where were they

protecting the union workers then? You heard about layoffs,

that they were involved in layoffs -- actually, I'll get back

to that in a second.

The big defense theory in this case is to point the

finger at Mary Elgin. This is all Mary Elgin's idea. She told

us to do it. She ruled with an iron fist. We were just

following orders. You know what that is, ladies and gentlemen?

That's an excuse. Remember, this is a conspiracy case.

Mary Elgin did not engage in this scheme alone. She got help

from her friends.

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Ethel Shelton packed ticket envelopes. She

collected money. She made calls for her. She kept track of

who's naughty and who's nice.

Alex Wheeler was her campaign manager, and he wants

to pretend he wasn't involved in this at all and he didn't know

what was going on. He distributed tickets to employees.

Linda Collins-Brown said so. He said so himself.

Showing Government's Exhibit 14, Page 21, it's easy

to pick and choose quotes, but you can't hide from your own

words. "Well, I'm just going to say that I'm going to give you

100 percent. I'm going to make sure they give you 100

percent." Not a hundred percent effort. I'm going to give you

100 percent. I'm going to get -- that is an agreement. That

is an agreement to join the conspiracy.

Mary Elgin, in order for this to advance the

conspiracy, she needed people that she could trust. She needed

people who believed it was okay to sell tickets to employees at

work or willing to do it despite the law. She needed people

who were committed to getting 100 percent commitment from their

subordinates. She needed people who believed that deputies

needed to bust heads for full participation. We're not

alleging that anybody hit anybody. This is not an assault

case. She needed willing participants and people who were

willing to break the law. She got that.

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler are trying to paint

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different pictures of themselves, that they're smart,

independent people but that they can't make decisions for

themselves. When subjected to cross-examination, Ethel Shelton

did admit that she made choices. These are two impressive

individuals. They have a history of working in employee rights

and labor issues, and that experience should have taught them

that they know what's right and wrong in the workplace.

They have a history of making their own choices and

their own decisions. And, ladies and gentlemen, everybody has

free choice. Everybody has free will. If your employee -- if

your boss tells you to break the law and you follow the law and

say, "I just do what my boss says," that's not a defense.

Everybody has a choice, ladies and gentlemen. You can say no,

like they probably said no in the past to management when they

were working for the union. Why didn't they say no this time?

These were choices, ladies and gentlemen. They

chose to help Mary Elgin. That is their choice, and they can't

blame anyone for their decisions other than themselves.

I want to talk to you a little bit about kickbacks.

Jury instruction 36, this has been muddled up in arguments by

the defense. Read the instruction. All the instructions are

important, but I want to point you to the kickback. Kickbacks

are understandings. They're an agreement. They're a quid pro

quo. The government doesn't have to prove that Ethel Shelton

and Alex Wheeler received anything.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 165

The word "extortion" and "coerced" and "forced" has

been used over and over and over and over. This is not an

extortion case. The government does not have to prove that

anybody was forced. It doesn't have to prove that there was

any pressure. A kickback can occur in many ways. A kickback

is an understanding. It is an understanding. And whose

word -- we had several employees come in here.

They said there was no evidence of a kickback. A

kickback isn't only dealing with contractors. Here, the

understanding from the employees was that they would get their

job, as employees, and the money that they received for that

job, some of that would have to go back to the trustee.

Now, that's the understanding. The government

doesn't have to prove that that actually was what happened.

They don't have to prove that anybody was actually laid off.

That was the understanding.

You had several employees come in here -- Gladys

Miller said she expected it with the job. She believed that

buying tickets would positively effect her job. Debra Piggee

said she felt expected to buy tickets or felt that her job

would be impacted if not. She went to a rally after working a

full day serving the public because she did it for job

security.

Horace Clay said people told him they were laid off

for not buying tickets. Cynthia Holman-Upshaw felt pressured

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 166

to buy tickets. Linda Collins-Brown felt it was expected of

her to buy tickets. Warrien Poole felt expected to buy

tickets. That was their understanding. The kickback does not

require a written agreement or contract or statement. It need

not express the quid pro quo agreement in express terms.

The quid pro quo can happen by action. It happened

by context. When you have deputies handing out tickets or

leaving them on their chair or walking to them during their

lunch breaks -- this excuse about breaks and lunch breaks is

offensive, ladies and gentlemen. They're using it as an excuse

to say what they were doing is right. What about the

employees' lunch breaks? What about their breaks? Don't they

have a right to be free from being harassed by their

supervisors or being encouraged gently and kindly, "Hey, it

would really help out. You know, we got layoffs going on."

What about their breaks? Aren't they entitled to a

break. Does that make it right for Ethel Shelton and

Alex Wheeler and everyone else involved in this to do it during

a break? Former union leaders should know better.

Alex Wheeler says there is no evidence against him.

The evidence against -- first of all, the evidence against

Ethel Shelton is overwhelming. She's -- I don't think it is

even disputed that she was distributing tickets in the

workplace up on the 3rd floor, and she was collecting this and

keeping track of everything.

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And the fact that people like her doesn't matter.

She's still doing it. It's not -- like I said, this is not a

-- it's not about their character. It's not about their

personality. She's knowingly joining the conspiracy. She's

advancing the conspiracy. She's helping. That makes her

guilty.

And Alex Wheeler did the same thing. I'm not going

to put his quotes up again, but his quotes are pretty clear.

He said, "I will give you 100 percent." He's agreeing. He's

participating. He handed out tickets. He can't hide from his

words.

Now, I've not talked a lot about Stafford Garbutt

and defense counsel did. They spent a lot of time attacking

his character, his motives. They seem obsessed with who he's

sleeping around with, if he had sex with Mary Elgin. And there

have been questions asked that he had disagreements about

religion with Ethel Shelton and that he said things that were

offensive to her. What did that accomplish, ladies and

gentlemen?

This case really isn't about Stafford Garbutt.

Stafford Garbutt is -- nobody's saying he's a hero. Nobody's

saying that -- he, himself, admits that he was a part of it, a

big part of it. What Stafford Garbutt did is he let law

enforcement know about it. In order for law enforcement to

find out more about it, they used him to record. And he

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REBUTTAL ARGUMENT - GOVERNMENT Vol. 10, Page 168

recorded -- he provided recordings. And which ones were

selected and which ones that -- ladies and gentlemen, whatever

Stafford Garbutt's motives are, it doesn't change what

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler said in those conversations. It

doesn't change what was found on their desks. It doesn't

change what was found on their computers. It doesn't change

what the employees said. That's the evidence, ladies and

gentlemen.

You heard testimony -- I want to address something

because I think there has been a misimpression here, ladies and

gentlemen, that Stafford Garbutt while working as an FBI

informant was instructed the copy or obtain documents that were

in plain view. You heard Special Agent Nathan Holbrook testify

about plain view. There was a suggestion in cross-examination

that there may have been some violation of privacy or rights.

You heard the judge strike that remark.

This whole nonsense about obtaining documents is a

red herring. We heard about red herrings. It's a tactic meant

to distract you. The judge decides the law. The judge decides

whether something is legal or illegal. The judge decides

whether evidence is admissible or inadmissible. The judge has

admitted all the evidence that you heard and saw. That means

the judge has decided it is legally permissible for you to

consider all of the evidence that has been admitted.

It is your job to assess the evidence, to weigh it,

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to use your common sense and reasoning to make sense of it. It

is your job to assess whether Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler

meant what they said in conversations they did not know were

being recorded. It is your job to decide what conclusions to

draw about the overwhelming amount of physical evidence of

campaign work found at the Calumet Township Trustee's Office,

including in Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler's office.

It is your job to evaluate the credibility of

current and former township employees and decide whether they

were telling the truth when they said that they paid for

campaign fundraiser tickets with money they earned from their

public salaries in exchange for job security.

It is your job to decide whether all the excuses

that you've heard justifying misuse of taxpayer property,

money, and resources for personal and political use are

defensible. Because they're not. This case is about -- we've

said it over and over, ladies and gentlemen. This is about

government waste. It's about accountability. It's about

choices.

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler made choices. They

made choices to participate, to knowingly participate, in all

this unlawful activity, and they didn't make the choice to walk

away. All the evidence points to one conclusion, that

Ethel Shelton and Alex Wheeler are guilty. We ask you to

return a verdict of guilty on all counts.

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Ashley N. Stokes, CSR, RPR

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 170

THE COURT: Once you are all in the jury room, the

first thing you should do is choose a foreperson. The

foreperson should see to it that your discussions are carried

on in an organized way and that everyone has a fair chance to

be heard. You may discuss the case only when all jurors are

present.

Once you start deliberating, do not communicate

about the case or your deliberations with anyone except other

members of your jury. You may not communicate with others

about the case or your deliberations by any means. This

includes oral or written communications as well as any

electronic method of communication such as telephone, cell

phone, smart phone, computer, text messaging, instant

messaging, internet, chat rooms, blogs, websites, or services

like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, or any

other method of communication.

If you need to communicate with me while you are

deliberating, send a note through the court security officer.

The note should be signed by the foreperson or by one or more

of the members of the jury. To have a complete record of this

trial, it is important that you do not communicate with me

except by a written note. I may have to talk to the lawyers

about your message, so it may take me some time to get back to

you. You may continue your deliberations while you wait for my

answer.

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 171

Please be advised that transcripts of trial

testimony are not available to you. You must rely on your

collective memory of the testimony.

If you send me a message, do not include the

breakdown of any votes you may have conducted; in other words,

do not tell me that you are split 6/6, 8/4, or whatever your

vote happens to be. Verdict forms have been prepared for you.

You will take these forms with you to the jury room.

When you have reached a unanimous agreement, your

foreperson will fill in the date and sign the appropriate

verdict forms, and each of you will sign your name under each

of the verdicts. Advise the court security officer once you

have reached a verdict on all counts, and you come back to the

courtroom. I will read the verdicts aloud.

Your verdicts must represent the considered judgment

of each juror. Your verdict on each count, whether it's guilty

or not guilty, must be unanimous. You should make every

reasonable effort to reach a verdict. In doing so, you should

consult with each other, express your own views, and listen to

your fellow jurors' opinion.

Discuss your differences with an open mind. Do not

hesitate to re-examine your own view and change your opinion if

you come to the belief it is wrong, but you should not

surrender your honest beliefs about the weight or effect of the

evidence just because of the opinions of your fellow jurors or

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 172

just so that there can be a unanimous verdict.

The 12 of you should give fair and equal

consideration to all the evidence. You should deliberate with

the goal of reaching an agreement that is consistent with the

individual judgment of each juror. You are impartial jurors,

judges of the facts. Your sole interest is to determine

whether the government has proved this case beyond a reasonable

doubt.

Members of the jury, in a moment you are going to

retire and deliberate on your verdict. The Court will provide

you with the following verdict forms:

Count 1, conspiracy to commit wire fraud,

Ethel Shelton: We the jury, upon our oath, unanimously find

defendant, Ethel Shelton, as to the offense of conspiracy to

commit wire fraud as charged in Count 1 of the Indictment,

there's a place for not guilty if that's your verdict or guilty

if that's your verdict; a place for the foreman's signature;

and then a date, which must be entered; and also a place for

everybody to sign the form.

Count 1, conspiracy to commit wire fraud,

Alex Wheeler: We the jury, upon our oath, unanimously find

defendant, Alex Wheeler, as to the offense of conspiracy to

commit wire fraud as charged in Count 1 of the Indictment,

there's is a place to check not guilty; a place to check

guilty; a place for the foreperson's signature; a place for the

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 173

date; and a place for each of the jurors to sign the verdict

form.

Count 6, conspiracy to commit honest services wire

fraud, Ethel Shelton: We the jury, upon our oath, unanimously

find the defendant, Ethel Shelton, as to the offense of

conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud as charged in

Count 6 of the Indictment, there is a place to check not

guilty, if that's your verdict; a place to check guilty if

that's your verdict; a place for the foreperson's signature; a

place for the date; and a place for each of the jurors to sign

the verdict form.

Count 6, conspiracy to commit honest services wire

fraud, Alex Wheeler: We the jury, upon our oath, unanimously

find defendant, Alex Wheeler, as to the offense of conspiracy

to commit honest services wire fraud as charged in Count 6 of

the Indictment, again, if your verdict is not guilty, a place

to check; if the verdict is guilty, a place to check; a place

for the foreperson's signature; a date; and then a place for

all the jurors to sign.

After your deliberations and when you have reached

your verdict, the proper verdict forms prepared for you should

be completed, signed by your foreperson and each juror, and

returned to open court.

Will the court security officers please stand?

(The Court Security Officers complied.)

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 174

THE COURT: I now place this jury in your charge.

And, Marijana, would you administer the oath to the court

security officers.

(The oath was duly administered.)

SECURITY OFFICER ROGALSKI: We do.

SECURITY OFFICER VELEZ: We do.

THE COURT: Mr. Dillon and Mr. Robinson, you have

been chosen in this case as alternate jurors; that is, jurors

who stand ready to replace any member of the jury of 12 who,

for whatever reason, may have to be excused from service.

While you will not be going into deliberations with the rest of

the jurors, you remain a part of the case until a final

resolution.

You may now leave, but you must continue observing

my admonitions about not talking with anyone about this case,

reading about it in the newspapers or internet, or following

the case on any media outlets. Please give your contact

information to Marijana so she can contact you if your services

are needed during the deliberations. And by the same token,

until you are told otherwise, please stay in the vicinity of

the Northern District of Indiana so you can be readily

summoned. Even if your services are not needed, my courtroom

deputy will contact you to let you know when you are relieved

of your obligations.

Also, if you can wait a few more moments outside in

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FINAL INSTRUCTIONS Vol. 10, Page 175

the hallway -- actually, my law clerk will take you back to my

chambers. I'd like to thank the two of you individually for

your service. As I said, again, she'll walk you back to my

chambers where that will take place.

Members of the jury, you are to go to the jury room

and elect a foreperson, but do not begin your deliberations

until I have instructed you through the court security officer

that you may begin your deliberations.

The court security officers may now escort the jury

to the jury deliberation room. Please advise the Court when

the jury is ready for the verdict.

(Jury out at 3:22 p.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

The attorneys need to make sure the exhibits are in

the proper form to get back there and make sure that jurors

have been provided with exhibits, the Indictment as modified, a

copy of the instructions, and verdict forms. Check those

things closely and make sure we have them right. When all that

is done, I will tell the jury to start their deliberations.

One thing you need to do is stay within 15 minutes

of the courthouse if possible. Make sure Marijana has your

cell phone so we can contact you if the jury has a question or

if the jury has a verdict.

MS. LERNER: Your Honor, do you think you will keep

the jurors late today, assuming they're willing to?

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THE COURT: I'll keep them as long as they want to

stay.

MS. LERNER: Okay.

THE COURT: It's a Friday night, so I will keep them

as long as they want to stay. I'll leave that up to them.

MR. ZANZI: Okay. We'll work on the exhibits.

(Recess had at 3:24 p.m., and proceedings resumed in open

court at 8:01 p.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

The long and short of it is the jury wants to go

home, so I'm going to bring them in and give them an admonition

about the recess and so forth. But that's it. I'm sorry I got

you all here. One person from each side could have come and

that probably would have taken care of it. You could have

given your proxy to people.

Anyway, bring the jury in.

(Jury in at 8:03 p.m.)

THE COURT: You can be seated.

The quick answer to your question, you can go home.

I've got to give you -- the reason I had to bring you in here

is to give you your admonition for the record.

And also one thing, more of a minor thing, some of

you are smokers apparently. I'm not going to have you identify

yourselves. If you need to smoke, talk with the court -- just

don't do it all at one time. You have to space your breaks

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out.

To the other ones that are still here and not going

out, you can't deliberate while they're gone, so you have to

stop your deliberations while they're out. When they come

back, you can start deliberating again. There is really no way

to monitor that. The CSOs can go with smokers. One will stay

up here, but I really kind of count on you all to take care --

just make sure you don't start deliberating until you have a

complement of jurors.

We'll reconvene at 9:00 o'clock on Monday. Again,

don't start deliberating until all the jurors are here on

Monday, and we'll proceed forward. And enjoy your weekend.

UNIDENTIFIED JUROR: Do we report to the courtroom

first Monday or go straight to the jury room?

THE COURT: You go straight to the jury room and

start deliberating. As soon as you have the 12 jurors all

there -- and your foreman can make that determination -- you

can start deliberating at that point. Have a good weekend.

MS. LERNER: Your Honor, do they get the regular

admonition that you give them regarding not reading the

newspaper and all of that?

THE COURT: Thanks for reminding me of that. That's

the purpose I brought them in here. We see where the problem

is with this case. It sits right up here.

During this recess and all other recesses, you must

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not communicate about this case with anyone. This includes

your family, other jurors, and anyone involved in the trial.

This also includes all forms of communication including

electronic communication.

Do not watch or listen to any news reports

concerning this trial on television or on the radio, and do not

read any news accounts of this trial in the newspaper or on the

internet, if any.

You are required to keep an open mind until you have

heard all the evidence in the case, the closing arguments of

counsel -- you've heard that. Don't let anybody talk to you.

You can't tell your family or anyone else. You can talk to

each other, but you can't talk to your family about it or any

of your friends. And you can't talk to each other unless you

are all together.

I'll see you Monday at -- I probably won't see you

Monday. You will all be here Monday, but just go straight to

the jury room, and you can start deliberating when you have all

12 there. Enjoy your weekend.

(Jury out at 8:06 p.m.)

THE COURT: Ms. Lerner, thanks for reminding me

about that. I got sidetracked when I got on the smoking issue.

MS. LERNER: I have Mr. Bell to thank for that.

THE COURT: Okay. We're not going to thank Mr. Bell

for anything, but we'll let it go at that.

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I'll see you -- they'll be here Monday at

9:00 o'clock. I won't start them with deliberations. As soon

as they have 12, they will start on their own. Hopefully we

can get to a verdict on Monday. Have a good weekend.

MR. ROGERS: Judge, I have a gigantic criminal call

on Monday morning in another court -- actually in Porter

County. I can probably be here at 9:30.

THE COURT: You don't have to be here. The jury is

coming in, and they'll start on their own. What you have to be

is close enough that if a verdict is reached or something, you

could be here in 15 or so minutes, give or take.

I mean, make sure -- when Marijana was trying to get

ahold of you, your voicemail was full, and we have to be able

to get in touch with you and know where you are and what time

you're going to be somewhere. You don't have to be here when

they come back. Nobody has to be here when they come back.

They'll start deliberating on their own.

MR. ROGERS: All right. Thank you.

THE COURT: Any other questions?

MS. GAMBINO: No, Your Honor.

MS. LERNER: No, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Okay. Have a good weekend.

(Proceedings adjourned at 8:08 p.m.)

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* * * * *

CERTIFICATION

I, ASHLEY N. STOKES, Federal Court Reporter, certify

that the foregoing is a correct transcript from the record of

proceedings in the above-entitled matter.

S:/Ashley N. Stokes May 19, 2020

Certified Realtime Reporter

United States District Court

Northern District of Indiana

Hammond Division

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