San Diego
After a query from the jury about the court’s holiday vacation schedule, the judge in the fraud and tax-evasion trial of Nancy Hoover Hunter said he may order the jury to spend more time in deliberations.
U. S. District Judge Earl B. Gilliam, outside the presence of the panel, said that, if there is no verdict by the end of the month, “I may have to tell them to come in every day.”
After the meeting he has every morning with jurors, Gilliam said, “I don’t want to talk about anything. I want a verdict.”
Gilliam’s comments came at the beginning of the seventh day of deliberations. Jurors are weighing stacks of evidence that has accumulated since the trial began in mid-April.
The panel is deciding whether Hunter played a key role in the massive J. David & Co. Ponzi scheme, which defrauded about 1,200 people out of $80 million.
A government indictment, which contains 197 counts, charges Hunter with conspiracy, fraud, tax evasion, and lying to a government agency.
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