Flames, hyenas, etc.

I wanted to wait a little bit for the paper of record to fully update their coverage. Now that they have:

Sheldon Silver, former speaker of the New York State assembly: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!

Mr. Silver, 71, a Manhattan Democrat, was convicted on all seven counts against him. The charges of honest services fraud, extortion and money laundering stemmed from schemes by which he obtained nearly $4 million in exchange for using his position to help benefit a cancer researcher and two real estate developers.

I am worried, though, about the jury issues:

Last week, as the jury first convened to deliberate, a juror sent a note to the judge, Valerie E. Caproni, asking to be excused from the case and saying she was “feeling pressured, stressed out … told that I’m not using my common sense, my heart is pounding and my head feels weird.”

On Monday, a second juror asked to be removed from the case, citing a conflict of interest related to his job. The juror, Kenneth Graham, a taxi driver, told the judge he had learned during the Thanksgiving recess that the owner of the medallion cab he drove was a good friend of Mr. Silver’s, and belonged to the same synagogue as the assemblyman.

I’m hoping this doesn’t give Silver grounds for a successful appeal.

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