‘Frustrated’ Jurors Keep Plugging in Percoco Trial

By JEREMY MYRTHIL & KURTIS RATTAY

Jurors in the federal corruption trial of a former top aide of Gov. Andrew Cuomo continued deliberations on Thursday in what appeared to be a last-ditch attempt to reach agreement after the panelists earlier had declared themselves sharply deadlocked.

“The only thing we seem to agree on is that we cannot agree,” said one juror in a note to Judge Valerie Caproni on Tuesday.

The defendant Joseph Percoco, whom the late Mario Cuomo once dubbed his “third son”, was accused of cutting sweetheart deals with state business executives in exchange for over $300,000 in bribes.

After over seven weeks of trial and seven days of deliberation in U.S. District Court, many jurors voiced frustration and fatigue. Three jurors, in fact, have pleaded with the judge to excuse them from service. Their requests were denied.

The jury interrupted their consultations to ask the judge to provide the transcript of the entire trial surprised the courtroom

 “Logistically,” Caproni said, “it will be very time consuming, measured in days, to get you the entire transcripts.”

The request was denied.

The case last month was thrown into turmoil when the star witness Todd Howe,  a former Albany lobbyist who cooperated with prosecutors after pleading guilty to eight felonies, was arrested in the midst of the trial after he admitted on the witness stand that he had scammed a credit card company in violation of his plea agreement, which required him to avoid further criminal acts.

The jurors who asked to be excused cited childcare and personal issues when explaining why they “physically and emotionally cannot do this anymore.”

She recently delivered an Allen charge – an instruction given by a court to a deadlocked jury to encourage it to continue deliberating until it reaches a verdict. She added that she was “incredibly sympathetic” to their plights.

The jury was excused early and was scheduled to continue deliberating Friday.