I'd say that the news about Blago's trial ending (for the most part) on a hung jury surprised me, but it really doesn't. Once the jury was out for more than a few hours I knew something wasn't right and my suspicions were confirmed as I read the articles about the trial after the fact. Apparently he had at least one "friend" on the jury and that's all it took.
As a fan of the legal thriller genre, I've read plenty of good books about legal cases (both actual cases and fictional ones) and learned fairly well how the juror selection process goes and how important it is for both the prosecution and defense to do their best in that area. In this case it looks like the defense did a great job on behalf of their client as 11 members of the jury were ready to find him guilty as charged on several of the counts but one juror held out and refused to cooperate no matter what the others tried. It's a shame that juror didn't cooperate (at least in my opinion, given what I know of the facts of the case), but oh well. I don't know if, perhaps, the other jury members tried convincing her (the holdout was a female) that if she felt that there was a chance Blago wasn't guilty it wouldn't matter if she voted in favor of his guilt as the case would surely be appealed anyway, but regardless she held out.
What she wound up doing in the end is costing herself and the rest of the taxpayers twice the money to try the case twice, once that ended in the mistrail, and now, in the future, another trial that will hopefully result in an actual verdict. Most likely guilty, but either way a real verdict and not one where somehow some of the jurors are able to look past the evidence to conclude that he doesn't need to go to jail for what he did.
The sad thing is that plenty of innocent people are found guilty and it takes years for justice to be served on their behalf and yet where it's so obvious that someone really is guilty they are able to get away with their misdeeds because all it takes is one juror to believe in their innocence or at least to feel that there would be a miscarriage of justice if they found that individual guilty.
Blago's lawyers certainly earned their keep (for now), and for now he'll probably remain out of jail pending a new trial and appeal of the one conviction that he's been found guilty of. Gawd bless the people of the state of Illinois and the federal prosecutors that will work on putting him away for good, lord knows they'll need the help.
