(The Center Square) – Jurors are scheduled to return from an 18-day holiday break on Monday at the corruption trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and codefendant Michael McClain in Chicago.
Judge John Robert Blakey held a charge conference for attorneys on Jan. 2, when prosecutors and the defense teams discussed terminology used in the indictment.
The jury last reported to the Dirksen Federal Building on Dec. 19, when Madigan’s attorneys called Illinois Appellate Court Justice David Ellis to the witness stand.
Ellis served as counsel to Madigan three separate times, including as chief counsel to the speaker from 2006-2007 and as special counsel in Chicago from 2012-2014, when he was elected to his current position as an appellate court justice in Illinois’ First District.
St. Xavier University Professor David Parker observed that Ellis went from being Madigan’s counsel to the appeals court bench in 2014.
“I saw that and I’m like, ‘Hmmm, I wonder how that happened’,” Parker told The Center Square.