No verdict in sight yet for John Edwards

No verdict in sight yet for John Edwards

GREENSBORO, N.C. â€" For weeks, the focus of the John Edwards campaign finance trial was the former senator's adulterous behavior and his convoluted attempts to cover it up.

Now, after seven tedious days of jury deliberations and no verdict in sight, the focus for bored courtroom spectators is the jurors' behavior.

Are they hopelessly deadlocked? Are they struggling with the evidence? What are their mysterious "scheduling conflicts"? And what are they wearing?

U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles, normally an inscrutable jurist, provided a few hints Tuesday before sending the jury home with instructions to report early Wednesday for an eighth day of deliberations. It turns out the scheduling conflicts involve a prosaic rite of spring: high school graduation.

Eagles announced that several jurors and some alternates were eager to attend family graduations. Some mentioned ceremonies scheduled for next week, she said, indicating that jurors haven't ruled out deliberations stretching beyond Friday.

"It appears to be high school graduation season," the judge said.

Eagles did not mention jurors' sartorial selections, but plenty of reporters and spectators who have spent weeks riding the courtroom's hard wooden benches have pai d close attention. They noticed that the four alternate jurors all wore yellow on Thursday and red on Friday.

For those keeping track, the alternates' color scheme for Tuesday was gray and black. What it means, if anything, is anyone's guess.

Equally opaque is the comportment of a particular alternate â€" an attractive, dark-haired young woman. Some reporters and spectators, with plenty of free time to gossip while lounging in the courtroom in anticipation of a verdict, are convinced she's been smiling at, and flirting with, one Johnny Reid Edwards.

It can be reliably reported that, on Tuesday, the alternate stared straight ahead and did not smile during her roughly 15 minutes in the public eye, when jurors assembled briefly in the courtroom. Edwards kept his eyes front and center, on the judge's bench.

Reporters and spectators are studying jurors' body language, trying to determine whether they are at odds and deadlocked â€" or still slogging thr ough mountains of exhibits from 17 days of testimony by 31 witnesses. In addition to lurid testimony about Edwards' cross-country trysts with Rielle Hunter, an erstwhile campaign videographer, the trial also featured forensic examinations of bank transactions and campaign finance laws.

For an instant Tuesday, Eagles seemed poised to announce that a verdict had been reached. After calling the jury into the courtroom late in the afternoon, she told lawyers for both sides:

"The jury sent me a note saying they had reached â€"" and Eagles paused dramatically.

Reporters leaned forward, pens poised.

" â€" a good stopping point," Eagles went on. Jurors were ready to break for the day.

The judge did not reveal details of the "juror matter" that she and the lawyers discussed in closed sessions Friday and Tuesday. She repeated her previous warnings to jurors not to discuss the case outside the jury room â€" even with fellow jurors â€" and to avoid med ia coverage, Internet browsing and other outside distractions.

Their verdict, Eagles reminded jurors, must be a "collective, deliberative" decision based solely on evidence presented in the courtroom.

Eagles' subsequent comments Tuesday suggested that jurors anticipate deliberating well into this week. The judge seemed inclined to let them out early on certain days for graduations, but told to them to begin working longer hours â€" starting at 9:15 a.m. instead of 9:30 a.m., and finishing at 4:45 p.m. rather than 4:30 p.m.

The jurors have been in court since jury selection was completed April 23. Deliberations, which have dragged on for about 39 hours, began May 18.

The jury of eight men and four women must decide whether $925,000 from two wealthy patrons amounts to illegal campaign contributions donated during Edwards' failed race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination â€" and that Edwards knew about them and knew they were illegal.

< p> Edwards contends the payments were private gifts intended to hide the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth Edwards. His lawyers have said Edwards did not know about the payments during the campaign.

Edwards, 58, twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination and was the party's 2004 vice presidential nominee. He faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all six counts against him.

Before sending jurors home Tuesday, Eagles told them that one juror's "personal matter" will oblige them to finish early â€" 2:30 p.m. â€" on Friday. "If we're still here Friday," she added.

She paused, then went on: "We'll worry about next week later."

david.zucchino@latimes.com