PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — City Councilmember Kenyatta Johnson, his wife, Dawn Chavous, and two executives of the Universal Companies were acquitted by a federal jury on Wednesday in a bribery retrial. The verdict came on the fifth day of deliberations, just hours after the judge dismissed a juror in the case and ordered the panel to start deliberations again from the beginning.
The original trial in April was declared a mistrial after the jury was unable to agree on a verdict after 25 hours of deliberations. It looked for a while like the retrial might end the same way, but just three hours after the jury restarted deliberations, they returned to announce they had a verdict.
They found Johnson and Chavous not guilty of federal bribery and honest services fraud charges. They also acquitted the Universal Company's former CEO Rahim Islam and former CFO Shaheed Diwan of those charges.
The present jury was tasked with reaching a unanimous verdict on charges that Johnson took a bribe from Universal Companies disguised as a contract to his wife’s consulting company.
Officials said in 2014, Johnson took two routine actions that seemingly benefitted the Universal Companies: He sponsored a zoning change for a building it owned, and when asked, he told the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority that he did not want it to retake possession of lots that Universal owned jointly with the Philadelphia Housing Authority.
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Prosecutors alleged Johnson’s reason was not his long-time support of the company or the preference of his constituents, but a consulting contract that his wife Dawn Chavous had with the company, for which she earned about $67,000 over 16 months, from 2013 until two months before Johnson sponsored the zoning change.
Even the second time around, it appeared to be a difficult case because, as the government acknowledges, it is purely circumstantial. After A six-year investigation involving thousands of documents and dozens of witnesses, the government was unable to find any direct evidence of a crime.
Prosecutors asked jurors in the retrial to “bring the glue” to hold the case together. The defense reminded them they must give the defendants the presumption of innocence.
Islam and Diwan face a second trial that is set to begin any day. The same jury will be hearing it, so reporters were unable to speak to members of the panel to find out exactly what happened.
There were 10 or 15 supporters who were in that courtroom every day, just sitting, waiting for a verdict. Observers were told to remain silent in the courtroom and to not react to the verdict, and they obliged. But when Johnson emerged from the federal courthouse in Philadelphia, they cheered him on.
He thanked them, the jury, and God — and he said he was getting back to work on the gun violence problem in Philadelphia.