“It’s a victory for the defense for several reasons,” said Douglas Godfrey, a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law, arguing that the way the government had presented its case was extremely complex. “If the jury hangs on 22, it’s a big blow to government.”

Michael Helfand, a Chicago defense attorney not involved in the case, agreed there was potentially positive news in the note for Blagojevich.

“The defense has every reason to be thrilled,” Helfand said. “This jury has been deliberating for such a long time, the chances of someone changing their mind now aren’t good.”

But Daniel Coyne, another Kent professor, said it may not be such good news for the defense, since no one knows what the two counts are that have been decided, or how the jury decided on them.

“That’s a little premature,” he said. “It means some more sleepless nights (for the defense). Trying to forecast what a jury is doing is really very treacherous work.”

The 11 counts the jury has yet to discuss involve wire fraud. Most of them deal with FBI wiretap recordings and the allegation that Blagojevich tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat.

The jurors did not say which two of the 24 counts they had agreed on, nor what their decision was.

As Zagel read the jury note to a packed courtroom, Blagojevich and his brother listened intently, sitting at the edge of their chairs. After the hearing adjourned, Blagojevich smiled in a huddle with attorneys. He put his arm around wife Patti’s shoulder.

Blagojevich did not comment after the hearing, but at least one of his attorneys, Aaron Goldstein, suggested that the latest word from jurors could be good news for his client.

“I think there’s a lot of cautious optimism,” he said.

For their part, prosecutors appeared worried — standing together in court after the hearing to discuss the implications of the note. They did not comment as they left the courtroom.

A number of analysts believe the jury may need some time to work through the remaining counts.

“If they haven’t addressed the wire fraud counts, we’re going to be here until next week,” Kent professor Richard Kling told WLS-TV.

Joel Levin, a former federal prosecutor, said it could be that one or two jurors are “really digging their heels in” on other counts, and the jury has just not gotten to the wire fraud counts.

He said what is particularly baffling is that there were few notes to the judge throughout deliberations. Until the 11th day, they had sent only two.

“Given they’ve accomplished virtually nothing, you would have thought we’d heard something,” he said.

Which counts they’ve agreed or disagreed on is crucial, especially when it comes to arguably the most serious charge, racketeering.

As they consider the racketeering charge, the indictment requires jurors to decide whether Blagojevich committed more than 20 separate illegal actions, from trying to sell the Senate seat to squeezing a construction executive for campaign cash.

Many other charges, including wire fraud, rely on whether jurors have already agreed Blagojevich committed the long list of actions under racketeering. That makes the racketeering count a kind of legal domino. If jurors convict on it, many other counts should also come in as guilty.

Asked if Thursday’s note suggests jurors are bogged down on racketeering, Blagojevich attorney Sheldon Sorosky agreed.

“Yes, it does seem to,” he said.

Blagojevich did not comment after the hearing. But when defense attorney Sam Adam Sr. was asked if he felt Thurday’s revelations were good news for his client, Adam responded, “I don’t know. I’ve learned a long time ago not to guess what juries are thinking.”

The jury sent a note to Zagel on Wednesday saying they were stuck, but without giving specifics. He asked for clarification.

Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to charges including that he tried to sell or trade the Senate seat appointment for a Cabinet post, private job or campaign cash, and tried to leverage the power of his office for personal gain.

If convicted, he could face up to $6 million in fines and a sentence of 415 years in prison, though he is sure to get much less time under federal guidelines.

His brother Robert Blagojevich, a Tennessee businessman, faces four counts and has pleaded not guilty.

Judges have a lot of autonomy in the event of a deadlock on some or all counts, Helfand said.

Besides sending jurors back to keep trying, a judge can ask them if there’s anything he could provide that might help them reach a verdict — transcripts of specific witness testimony, for instance.

Zagel praised the Blagojevich jurors Wednesday, calling them disciplined and diligent. Any discord has apparently been civil, Zagel told the court, with no reports of shouting or screaming from the room where they gather each weekday.

“Even though we feel like they’ve been deliberating a long time, given the number of counts, they really could keep at it longer,” said Nancy Marder, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law. “Jurors don’t have a sense of how long is long.”

A court clerk said jurors were scheduled to take Friday off and resume deliberations on Monday.

——

Associated Press writers Karen Hawkins and Sophia Tareen contributed to this report.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

CHICAGO (AP) — Jurors will go off to deliberate the fate of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich with the image of an immaculately dressed and smiling man with his two daughters sitting nearby in the courtroom, but also with the memory of him cursing in the vilest of terms about everyone from the president to the voters who elected him.

The ousted Illinois governor’s corruption trial will be placed in the hands of the jury Wednesday, much sooner than expected and without hearing from some of the witnesses they were told would take the stand — including Blagojevich.

After final jury instructions, jurors will be tasked with deciding the fate of the state’s second governor in a row to be charged with corruption in office. They will have to weigh seven weeks of testimony, which ranged from a hospital administrator saying he believed Blagojevich was threatening to withhold state money unless he ponied up a campaign contribution to a former deputy governor recounting how Blagojevich hid in the bathroom.

They will have to decide whether Blagojevich was engaged in various schemes to gain power and money or if he was an honest man who trusted the wrong people and innocently said the wrong things while the FBI listened in.

“This guy had more training in criminal background than the average lawyer and somehow this guy is the accidentally corrupt governor?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar.

Not corrupt at all, said Sam Adam Jr., one of Blagojevich’s defense attorneys.

“He’s got absolutely horrible judgment on people,” Adam said. “And that’s this case and they want you to find him guilty of these horrible things because of that.”

The two portraits of the disgraced former governor took center stage during closing arguments Tuesday with about the only thing the attorneys agreed on was that they both told the jurors to listen to the tape recordings.

“You heard the tapes, and you heard Rod on the tapes,” said Adam, who described his client as naive but not a criminal. “You can infer what was in Rod’s mind on the tapes. You can infer from those tapes whether he’s trying to extort the president of the United States. We heard tape after tape of just talking.”

But Schar told the jury to listen to both what the governor said and what he didn’t say. Blagojevich, he insisted, knew how to ask for a bribe in a way that the person on the other end of the phone understood exactly without him coming out and asking for it.

“He knows how to communicate, that is what he does for a living,” Schar said. “He’s good at it.”

Adam — pacing, sweating and alternately shouting and whispering to the jury — acknowledged to jurors that he did not call Blagojevich to testify, as he had promised when the trial started. But, he said, the reason was simple: the government did not prove its case.

“I thought he’d sit right up here,” Adam shouted, walking over to the witness stand and pointing at the empty chair. “I promised he’d testify. We were wrong. Blame me.”

Adam had wanted to name potential witnesses that prosecutors didn’t call to testify, even threatening Monday to risk jail by doing it after Judge James B. Zagel forbid it. Zagel said Tuesday that he didn’t want Adam to refer to evidence that potential witnesses allegedly would have offered.

Adam didn’t seem to cross lines in referring to President Barack Obama, presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — though he did seem to skirt it at least once. Zagel said he would deal with any improper references by Adam in his jury instructions Wednesday.

The prosecution objected more than 20 times to Adam’s statements, all of which Zagel sustained.

Blagojevich, 53, has pleaded not guilty to 24 counts, including trying to sell or trade an appointment to Obama’s vacated Senate seat for a Cabinet post, private job or campaign cash. His brother, Nashville, Tenn., businessman Robert Blagojevich, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to taking part in that alleged scheme.

Adam said prosecutors never presented evidence that anyone who was allegedly targeted by Blagojevich for a shakedown conducted fundraising.

“Tell me one state contract tied to fundraising?” he asked. “Did they bring one state contract based on fundraising? Just one? No.”

Schar did not raise his voice throughout his argument but did, as he wound down, display emotion for the first time. The prosecutor paused, rubbed his face and looked at the floor before he raised his head and gave what were the final words the jury would hear from attorneys.

“I don’t know how you begin to put a price on the damage defendant Blagojevich has caused,” he said. “The time for accountability for the defendants is now.”

Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to scheming to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and to scheming to launch a racketeering operation in the governor’s office.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

CHICAGO (AP) — Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys say the ousted Illinois governor will not testify at his corruption trial.

Blagojevich had long pledged to take the stand in his own defense, saying for months that he wanted to do so to set the record straight.

But his attorneys initially said Tuesday they could rest the case without calling a single witness. They confirmed that Wednesday. They say the prosecution did not prove its case.

Experts have said putting Blagojevich on the stand could be risky.

Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to scheming to sell or trade an appointment to President Barack Obama’s old Senate seat and to scheming to launch a racketeering operation in the governor’s office.