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Bell jury deliberating well past Thanksgiving, the predicted ending point

Former Bell assistant city manager Angela Spaccia stands outside the courtroom where she is being tried on 13 felony counts. Jurors have been in deliberations for eight days.
(Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)
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In mid-October when jurors were being chosen for the latest Bell corruption trial, a prosecutor told them they would be done well before Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is long gone and so is Hanukkah, and the jury is on to its eighth day deliberating whether Angela Spaccia, Bell’s former assistant chief administrative officer, is guilty of 13 felony counts.

In all fairness, the jurors haven’t been out as long as it seems. They were handed the case during the late morning of Nov. 22, following closing arguments.

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They met for a full day the following Monday, but only for three hours each Tuesday and Wednesday because a juror had child care problems. They were off for the Thanksgiving holiday until Dec. 2, and, since then, deliberations have continued each day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

These jurors still have a long way to go before until they hit the 17 days of deliberations and chaos in March when jurors reached a verdict in the trial of six former Bell council members.

Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal were convicted of increasing their salaries to as much as $100,000 a year by serving on city boards that met seldom, if ever. The panel acquitted the defendants on some charges and were unable to reach a verdict on others. Luis Artiga was found not guilty of all counts.

Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy, who also is presiding over the Spaccia case, declared a mistrial on the counts on which the jury hung, saying “all hell had broken loose.”

A day after the jury reached its decision, one panel member asked to reconsider the guilty verdicts and another passed a note to the judge urging her to “remind the jury to remain respectful and not to make false accusations and insults to one another.”

Kennedy refused to set aside the verdicts.

Prosecutors have said the former council members will be retried on those counts on which the jury failed to a reach verdict.

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The Spaccia case has not been without its own juror drama.

On Tuesday, a juror sent a note to Kennedy saying that another panel member was struggling to understand English, having trouble with English and wanted to deliberate alone.

The note said the panel had spent 7½ hours deciding just one of the counts against Spaccia and that juror No. 2 took another five hours and “still didn’t understand.”

Kennedy brought juror No. 2 into court, and he told her he was fluent in English and Spanish.

She asked him if he was having trouble working with the others.

“I said when everyone is talking I can’t think straight...,” the juror said.

Kennedy told the panel to go back to the jury room and continue deliberating, and they have, for two more days — and counting.

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jeff.gottlieb@latimes.com

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