Mistrial Refused in Aguilar Trial Deadlock

Jurors in the racketeering trial of U.S. District Judge Robert Aguilar reported Friday that they could not reach a verdict--but the trial judge refused to declare a mistrial and ordered them to resume deliberations.

Word of an apparent deadlock emerged at mid-afternoon in the sixth full day of deliberations when the jury informed U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle that it was unable to agree on any count facing Aguilar and the two other defendants in the case.

Bechtle summoned jurors into the courtroom and told them to re-examine opposing viewpoints and reassess their own positions in the case. While jurors should not abandon their convictions, they should try to resolve the charges, he said.

“It is highly desirable to reach a verdict on all or substantially all or at least some of the counts in the indictment,” the judge said.

Little more than an hour later, the jurors, some showing signs of strain, were brought back into the courtroom, dismissed for the weekend and told by the judge to resume deliberations Monday morning.

Charles Garry, one of Aguilar’s attorneys, immediately asked for a mistrial, but Bechtle quickly denied the motion, saying that any such action at this point in the deliberations was “plainly” unwarranted. Another lawyer for Aguilar, Patrick Hallinan, announced his intention to renew the motion for a mistrial if there is no verdict by late Monday morning.

Aguilar, 58, is the first federal judge to be accused of racketeering. If convicted, he would become the third federal jurist to be found guilty of a criminal charge in the last six years.

He was indicted in June, 1989, after a two-year investigation by the FBI on charges that he approached two other federal judges in an attempt to influence the outcome of two criminal cases involving two friends, Michael Rudy Tham, a former Teamster official and convicted embezzler, and Ronald Cloud, a Fresno businessman convicted of bank fraud.

Tham, 66, and Abe Chapman, 83, a reputed mobster, were charged along with Aguilar. Among other things, Aguilar was alleged by the government to have used his office as a “racketeering enterprise” to obstruct justice.