Crime & Law

Feds to Retry State Sen. Emil Jones III After Mistrial on Bribery, Lying to FBI Charges

CHICAGO — Federal prosecutors on Tuesday announced they intend to retry state Sen. Emil Jones III after his April trial on charges of bribery and lying to the FBI ended in a hung jury.

Jones, a Chicago Democrat and son of former Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., stands accused of agreeing to take bribes from red-light camera entrepreneur-turned-government cooperator Omar Maani in 2019, then lying to FBI agents about it.

A jury earlier this spring deadlocked in their deliberations over the three counts and after 23 hours of behind-closed-doors debate, Judge Andrea Wood declared a mistrial. Back in her courtroom nearly seven weeks later, Assistant U.S. Attorney Prashant Kolluri told Wood “the government would like to retry the case.”

Scheduling a retrial won’t happen until next week, however, and Kolluri noted that given the three-week length of Jones’ original trial, the judge may want to consider blocking off four weeks for the new trial “because there may be a few additional witnesses.”

The government called five witnesses in April, including Maani, who testified that he’d met with Jones for three separate dinners in the summer of 2019 at the FBI’s direction. Maani offered a campaign contribution to the senator in the same conversation he asked about Jones’ willingness to drop or modify legislation that called for a statewide study of red-light camera systems in Illinois. Maani testified he worried a study could be a “prelude to a ban” on his industry.

But Jones was more interested in Maani hiring his former intern, Christopher Katz.

“If you can raise me five grand, that’d be good,” Jones said on a secret video recording of his dinner with Maani on July 17, 2019, after Maani pushed him to come up with a number for the proposed campaign donation. “But most importantly, I have an intern working in my office and I’m trying to find him another job, another part-time job while he’s in school. … Do you all have any positions available?”

Prosecutors also called Katz to the witness stand, along with a pair of federal agents who questioned Jones about Maani in September 2019. But the jury could neither agree on whether Jones lied to the agents, nor whether Jones agreed to bribes in the form of a job for Katz or the campaign contribution — money that Maani never actually paid the senator.

During trial, Jones also made the risky decision to testify in his own defense. Jones told the jury that he was trying to avoid taking money from Maani, saying he gave off the vibe of a “used car salesman” and that he was aware Maani was trying to bribe him. But he also contradicted testimony from Katz, who downplayed his relationship with the senator, while Jones said they were close.

After Jones’ trial ended, the five-term senator returned to Springfield for the final weeks of the General Assembly’s spring legislative session; prior to his time in court, Jones hadn’t been to the Capitol since January’s lame duck session and inauguration activities.

Jones was originally indicted in September 2022 but went on to win another term in the Illinois Senate six weeks later, running unopposed. But he’s up for another four-year term in next year’s election cycle and will have to decide this summer whether he’ll circulate petitions in the fall to get on the March 2026 primary ballot while still under indictment or step away from politics.

Jones did not attend Tuesday’s hearing, but his attorneys indicated he’d need to be present for next week’s appearance to discuss a retrial schedule.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.

This article first appeared on Capitol News Illinois and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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