Voter Fraud Proven
Conflicting witness testimony did not determine verdict
Guilty verdicts were returned Wednesday against all five defendants in a month-old vote fraud trial that saw a prosecutor who had been chewed out by the judge emerge victorious.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Mike Carr was pressed for a comment after the verdicts, paused and thought for a moment.
“Wyatt Eisenhauer. That’s his name. The soldier from Pinckneyville,” was all Carr would say.
Carr’s closing argument to jurors was inspired by his chance encounter recently with Eisenhauer’s funeral procession. He compared a soldier’s duties to risks taken by his two key undercover witnesses, Dannita Youngblood and Rudy McIntosh.
Throughout the trial, conflicting statements from these two witnesses became a key issue for defense attorneys and the trial judge. U.S. District Judge G. Patrick Murphy commented outside the presence of the jury that he didn’t believe their testimony.
At one point Murphy sharply upbraided Carr for misleading him four times about testimony, an allegation the prosecutor vehemently denied.
The jury convicted all five defendants on every count after deliberating 5 1/2 hours Wednesday.
“This is a wake-up call,” said 23-year-old juror Lamont Reed Jr., who added that as a longtime East St. Louis resident he has always seen “some sort of corruption around the city.”
Corruption is everywhere, especially in politics and voting.
But despite Carr’s praise of Youngblood and McIntosh, jurors said they based their verdicts on undercover audio tapes.
“It was the recordings. That was it,” said juror Delores J. Schnur of Alton.
And the jury foreman, Marla M. Wagner of Glen Carbon, said, “We came to our conclusion from the tapes.”
U.S. Attorney Ron Tenpas later hailed the guilty verdicts.
“I do hope that this communicates what we think every prosecution should communicate, which is ‘violate federal law and we will investigate vigorously, we will prosecute thoroughly and we will investigate voting irregularities,’” he said.
Damnit, it’s always the tapes… the tapes…