Rezko: Government to Rest Case Monday, Defense by Wednesday
The trial of Tony Rezko is wrapping up. The Chicago Tribune reports the Government is expected to rest Monday.
The Tribune says the evidence against Rezko has been largely circumstantial and without a smoking gun to support the allegations of its cooperating star witness, the self-admitted drug-abuser and fixer Stuart Levine, who sang for his supper for weeks on the stand.
Jurors will have to pull together a variety of moving pieces if they are to agree on Rezko's guilt. There is no smoking gun evidence, no clear money trail of kickbacks into Rezko's pocket and no wiretap that indisputably captured Rezko in the act of scheming. Instead, jurors were taken on a disturbing ride through the dark underbelly of Illinois government.
To fix this, the Government this week called on Ali Ata, who had pleaded guilty days earlier and could use the sentencing break the government was offering for his Rezko testimony (8 years down to one.) The Tribune says Ata was called to support Levine's accounts rather than to provide a smoking gun against Rezko. [More...]
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