Blagojevich jurors may hear a dozen tapes

CHICAGO, July 15 (UPI) -- The judge hearing former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich's corruption case in Chicago rejected most of the tapes the defense seeks to admit into evidence.

U.S. District Court Judge James Zagel allowed in approximately one dozen of the 38 tapes reviewed, and said some the of the FBI wiretap tapes that jurors have already heard may be replayed.

Blagojevich has pleaded not guilty to charges that he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former Senate seat.

The Chicago Tribune reported the judge often seemed to search for new ways to call the recordings irrelevant to Blagojevich's corruption trial, the Tribune said.

"Excluded on the grounds of uselessness," the judge deemed one transcript.

Blagojevich attorney Aaron Goldstein sought to allow the jury to hear most of the recordings on the basis they showed Blagojevich's state of mind as he discussed Barack Obama's vacated U.S. Senate seat.

The former governor said his legal staff failed to inform him that he was doing anything illegal when he tried to trade the seat for a position in Obama's Cabinet or for another job, the Tribune said.

The Tribune said Zagel compared that contention to the situation where a man tells a lawyer at a party that he'd like to poison his wife, but the lawyer remains silent.

"Can you infer from that that it's OK to murder your wife?" Zagel asked.