A question from the jury in the FirstEnergy bribery trial signals its members are stuck on the state’s central allegation that the company’s former CEO and senior vice president paid a regulator a $4.3 million bribe.
The 12 jurors have been holed up in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas, deliberating charges since Wednesday. Besides a daily lunch break, they’ve been mulling the case in secrecy and solitude, leaving lawyers and reporters leaping at infrequent communiques and dissecting their every word.
In their third written question to Judge Susan Baker Ross delivered Monday afternoon, jurors perhaps tipped their hand.
“If we cannot agree on the charge of bribery, do we evaluate the other charges?” the jurors wrote to Judge Ross.
Ex-CEO Chuck Jones and senior vice president of external affairs Mike Dowling face charges of bribery, telecommunications fraud, tampering with records, racketeering and conspiracy. Their trial wrapped after six weeks of witness testimony and arguments last week.
Juries generally have three options. They can vote to convict, acquit, or if they can’t agree, they’re what’s known as a “hung jury,” which triggers a mistrial. The state can seek to re-try the case or drop all charges. Jurors are scheduled to return to deliberations Wednesday due to a scheduling conflict on Tuesday.
Their question doesn’t trigger any formal legal action.
In a hastily organized hearing Monday afternoon, Ross said she wouldn’t release the jurors’ question publicly to reporters. She has publicly disclosed the other two questions, as is customary.
Ross said the question at issue goes to the “heart of the jury deliberations” and she’s making the determination that the “interest of justice outweighs any public interest in releasing any further jury information right now.”
However, unbeknownst to Ross, Noah Munyer, an attorney for Dowling, read the question aloud to reporters before Ross publicized her decision to withhold the question. When a reporter informed her of this, Ross said she’s “concerned” about outside influence “creeping in” and influencing the jury, but affirmed that she wouldn’t release the question in any official capacity.
Conceptually, the charges split between two central allegations: one, that the two defendants brokered a corrupt financial relationship with Sam Randazzo in 2015 from which he embezzled funds ostensibly directed toward his legal client; and two, that the two defendants paid Randazzo a $4.3 million bribe in January 2019, shortly before Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Randazzo to lead the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Find more details about the allegations against the FirstEnergy defendants here.
From the office with the PUCO, Randazzo made several rulings worth tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars for FirstEnergy.
However, lawyers for the defendants argued that they were essentially the victims of a complex theft. Randazzo, they say, stole the $4.3 million from his legal clients without their knowledge. This undermines the notion that FirstEnergy’s money was intended to corruptly influence him.
From this perspective, the company’s behavior toward Randazzo as PUCO chair is better understood as aggressive lobbying rather than squeezing a bribe recipient, as Dowling’s attorney, Steven Grimes, said in closing arguments. Grimes conceded that both Dowling and Jones had several conversations about pending cases in violation of state legal ethics laws. But those things don’t equate to a bribe.
Randazzo died by suicide in April 2024 while under state and federal indictment. Prosecutors have framed the defense as a cheap ploy to blame a dead man.
The inquiry Monday wasn’t the first eyebrow-raising question from the jury. On Wednesday, the first day of deliberations, the jurors asked whether Ohio’s bribery laws apply to a recipient “before” they apply to become a public servant.
Randazzo was paid Jan. 2, 2019, but didn’t formally apply for the PUCO job until Jan. 17, 2019, although trial evidence shows he had been expressing interest in private communications before that.
Ross, the judge, wrote back a noncommittal answer: “All of the elements and definitions have been provided to you on this question and it is for you to decide as a factual matter.”
The third question was one of basic facts about a witness, which Ross answered by directing the jurors to “rely on your collective memories.”