Thursday, October 15, 2009 1:20 PM

Judge To Declare Mistrial On Most Ring Counts

A district court judge said today that she would be declaring a mistrial on seven of the eight counts against former Jack Abramoff associate Kevin Ring, after the jury declared in a note to the judge for the third time that it could not reach a unanimous decision on the charges.

"We are declaring a mistrial," Judge Ellen Huvelle told the prosecution and defense attorneys, though she did not inform the jury of her decision.

The jury's note also said that jurors were no longer unanimous on the eighth count, a charge of honest services wire fraud involving the wife of former Rep. John Doolittle, R-Calif., who was given a job with Abramoff's lobbying team. On Tuesday, jurors said they had reached unanimity on that count, but they did not reveal the verdict. The jury will reconvene this afternoon to determine whether or not they can return to unanimity on that count.

Judge Huvelle also said that the prosecution and defense attorneys will meet with the jury, perhaps this afternoon, to learn some details of their deliberations.

"I want you to have the opportunity to mull over what you've learned" from the jury ahead of a possible retrial, Judge Huvelle told the attorneys.

Ring's attorney, Andrew Wise, objected to an expedited retrial because the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear three cases in the coming months regarding the honest services wire fraud statute, which accounted for six of the eight charges against Ring. Because the Supreme Court may change the interpretation of the statute by addressing the "fundamental underlying problems with the vagueness of the statute," an immediate retrial would be "silly," he said.

The government may decide not to retry the case if it learns that the jury was close to acquitting Ring. Prosecutor Nathaniel Edmonds said that the government will try to "come to resolution on this" with Ring before moving to a retrial.