14-and-a-half weeks after the jury was first seated in former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan's federal bribery and racketeering trial, his fate, and that of his co-defendant Mike McClain is now in their hands.
While the case is now in the hands of the jury, any actual deliberations are unlikely to take place before Thursday. The delay is due to the countless recordings and documents that must be set up in the jury room for them and a foreman must be selected.
Including the more than 100 pages of instructions they have to go through.
The jury is made up by eight women and four men, including a nurse, a woman who works at a Goodwill donation center and a manager for Aramark food company.
Former Federal Prosecutor Chris Hotaling said they may start by taking an initial poll.
"They're not allowed to talk about the case until they begin the deliberations," Hotaling said. "So even though they've been together for more than four months. They really haven't had an opportunity to talk amongst themselves where each person feels."
The road to this day has been anything but straightforward. Court proceedings have gone weeks longer than expected and included, to everyone's surprise, the testimony of the former Illinois House Speaker himself. A highly risky move.
"It does come down to whether or not they believe him," Hotaling said. "Because they heard three months of all these recordings and the government's version of what those meant. And then they, on the other hand, have three or four days of testimony where he's saying it's 100% the opposite. How do you resolve it?"
Assistant US Attorney Amarjeet Bhachu got one last dig in during rebuttalon Wednesday. He called a liar, mocking his attempt to distance himself from his co-defendant, Mike McClain.
McClain is a former lobbyist, close friend and confidant of the then speaker who was widely known to frequently work out of the speaker's offices while in Springfield.
"You really think Michael Madigan's office was a public toilet where people could just come and park themselves?" Bhachu asked the jury.
"Now you just kind of hand over your baby to 12 people and let them decide it," Hotaling said.