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News, analysis and interviews with politicians and observers. back in the jury room. so how this all unfolded, just after 11:00 a.m., the jury did send a note to the court asking the judge, judge, what do we do if we can t come to a unanimous decision on one of the 18 counts. that implies that perhaps they have reached a decision unanimously on the other 17 counts, but they haven t said that definitively. what the judge had to do was he had to come up with instructions to give the jury as it pertained to them going back and deliberating yet again. that just happened. in just the past few minutes, the judge instructed the jury, go back into the jury room and continue to work on that one final count. try to continue to work, to come to some unanimous verdict on that one remaining count. outside of the presence of the jury, the judge indicated that he might be prepared to accept a partial verdict if they weren t able to come to a conclusion on that one remaining count that they s ....
Is known as a sawyer charge. he instructed them to try again, to listen to each other, whether or not there s only a couple of them who are stuck on one side of the equation, and to consider changing their vote if that doesn t violate their conscience. he was trying to remind this jury that they had a duty to come to a unanimous decision so long as that didn t violate their conscience. the judge wanted to remind both sides before he brought the jury back that what could happen next. if this jury remains stuck, we don t know how long that might be, we don t know how long he ll let them continue, but if they come back and say that they cannot reach a final decision on all of these counts, he told them he would consider obviously accepting a partial verdict. obviously we don t know which particular counts they ve reached their decision on. we don t know which side of this they ve come down on. so there s still a great deal of mystery for the defense and for the prosecution in this case. ....