Mike Madigan

A federal judge on Monday granted a partial retrial on several bribery counts in the case of four former executives and lobbyists for electric utility Commonwealth Edison who were convicted in 2023 for their roles in bribing longtime Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan.

Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan was convicted Wednesday of 10 counts of conspiracy, bribery and wire fraud. Madigan was speaker for 36 years before he was replaced after the bribery investigation.

“I went to the same high school as he did and I’ve always heard of him to be a good person,” jury foreman Timothy Nessner told the Sun-Times. “But I also know that good people sometimes break the law. In this particular case, the evidence proved to me that that’s what happened.”

Federal prosecutors have made it clear they are listening to phone calls. But have the threats of federal investigations and wiretapped conversations actually deterred criminal behavior in Illinois politics? Some aren’t convinced.

Illinois lawmakers voiced a wide range of reactions Wednesday following former House Speaker Michael Madigan’s conviction on multiple federal corruption charges.

The decade-long FBI investigation that led to Madigan’s trial roiled local politics and changed the course of Illinois history. The feds summoned 50 witnesses to a 12th-floor courtroom in their bid to prove Madigan and Michael McClain guilty of “corruption at the highest levels of state government.”

Madigan and his longtime ally, Michael McClain, are on trial for a racketeering conspiracy. Jurors are expected to resume deliberations Monday morning.

Jurors hearing former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s trial are finally scheduled to begin deliberations Wednesday afternoon more than three months after testimony in the case began.

After Michael Madigan spent several hours facing blistering cross-examination in his federal corruption trial, the former Illinois House speaker on Tuesday made a rare candid remark about the yearslong investigation that landed him on the witness stand in a Chicago courtroom.

The former speaker’s decision to testify will lengthen the already long trial, which was originally predicted to wrap before Christmas.