Day Three of waiting. The jokes in the tiny seventh floor media room of the U.S. District Court Building have grown stale.
We’d discuss what the jury ate for lunch (Padows? Jimmie Johns?) which we could see as the trolley rolled through the security doors. We were amusing ourselves by reading a hilarious underground Website (yoflo.net) about the McDonnell trial called “You’re Only First Lady Once,” replete with haikus such as “Empty beach house/A greedy wife and five kids/ jail will not be fun.”
Suddenly, one of the Post reporters blurts out from her screen, “Verdict.”
We rush out to assume our positions at the courtroom down the hall. My mission and goal, as explained by my Bloomberg News editors, is speed. First guilty verdict, fly out of there and either call or tweet or email. Go back. Detail can come later.
It took some time for the intellectual rights trial over patents to clear up before we could go in to the courtroom where we’d spent the better part of six weeks. There was an air of excitement in the first corruption trial ever of a Virginia governor. It is truly as heart-pounding moment, a coiled spring kind of thing. And once it finally starts, it has own unique swiftness.
Jury’s in — seven men and five women after 17 hours of deliberating. “Have you reached a verdict?” Then, “Guilty on Count One of Conspiracy to Commit Honest Services Wire Fraud.”
My cue. I duck past the U.S. Marshals at the door and get in a sprinting race with a young Post reporter. Make the curve by the elevators but she’s gaining and gets first to the media room, the only place we’re allowed to have the electronics that let us do our jobs. I fumble with my cell and finally get the number of Joe, my rewrite editor in New York. The goal is to beat the Associated Press. Did we? Joe doesn’t know yet.
I report, and according to plan, go to the sixth floor overflow room with remote television access to the courtroom, since it will be impossible to get back into the room where the action is. By now they are on Count Nine: Obtaining Property Under Color of Official Right.
I hear what sounds like sobbing. Then wailing, rising in a crescendo with each stab of a guilty verdict. It is a weird reality TV show kind of audio. Both Robert F. McDonnell and his wife are crying although I can’t see them. The wailing is from one of their daughters. It’s hard to describe emotions at such times. It’s like watching a bad car wreck. It is not funny.
The reporters form up, true to pack etiquette, and make sure we all have the right verdicts. Then it’s down to the street where the chum of photographers awaits. There is an emotional electricity on the streets, sort of like being in a hospital corridor when a relative finally dies.
The U.S. Attorney and the FBI are speaking into a mass of microphones maybe 50 feet away. Most, however, are waiting for the McDonnells. Ashen faced, the former Governor leaves the building in a mass of people. He thanks the press for how it handled things. He is pushed into a grey Mercedes. Then Maureen, wearing a brown suit, slips past with one of her daughters, and enters into a grey Infinity Q50, which speeds after the Mercedes.