Hobo trial juror will remain on panel; deliberations resume

A federal judge said Tuesday morning that a juror who wanted to get off the jury that’s currently deciding the fate of six members of the Hobo gang on trial for murder and racketeering will not go home and instead will rejoin his fellow jurors.

The juror sent U.S. District Judge John J. Tharp Jr. judge a note on Thursday after the jury’s first full day of deliberation that read: “Judge, how can I get off this jury? Maybe one of the alternates can take my place?”

“He initially said he’d made up his mind and the other jurors had not and he didn’t feel like he needed to sit around and deliberate if he’d already made up his mind,” Joseph Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Tuesday morning. “But the judge talked to him a little more and they agreed he could maintain an open mind.”

The juror rejoined the jury Tuesday morning as the group began their second day of deliberation at 10 a.m., Fitzpatrick said.

Frustration among jurors is understandable, considering their lives have been completely interrupted for three and a half months as they listened to testimony about the reign of terror that federal prosecutors say the Hobos street gang brought down on the South and West sides between 2004 and 2013.

The gang has been tied to nine murders, and most of the six defendants on trial in the racketeering case face a potential life sentence.

Contributing: Andy Grimm