On Wednesday a judge sent a Minneapolis man to prison for nearly five years for his role in a rare, and ultimately unsuccessful, conspiracy to bribe a federal juror.
It happened nearly two years ago at the first Feeding Our Future fraud trial, when several of the defendants and two others tried to buy an acquittal by stuffing $120,000 dollars in cash into a Hallmark gift bag and delivering it to a juror’s home. The plot unraveled when the woman called 911.
Now, another juror in the case is speaking publicly for the first time about how that played out in the jury room. Juror 17, as he was known in court, describes what it was like to be part of Minnesota’s most high-profile federal case. MPR News verified the juror’s identity but agreed not to name him to protect his privacy…