Prosecutor plays DeLay tape in closing

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- Deliberations in the money-laundering case against Tom DeLay were halted Monday and the jurors sent home by Texas State District Judge Pat Priest.

At 5 p.m. jurors told Judge Priest they wanted to deliberate until 6 p.m. and go home for the night if they hadn't reached a verdict. At 5:30 p.m. they handed him a note, the Austin American-Statesman reported.

"I am concerned giving a response that comments on the evidence in this case," said Priest before responding he wanted to ponder a response overnight before giving it to the jury.

The jury had been deliberating for 4 hours before which they heard closing arguments by prosecutors using Tom DeLay's words against him.

Travis County prosecutor Beverly Mathews played tapes in the Austin courtroom of a 2005 interview in which the former House majority leader admitted he knew in advance of a $190,000 exchange between his Texas political committee and the Republican National Committee, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"They had to come up with a way to circumvent the law, bypass the law, to get that corporate money to those candidates," Mathews told the jury.

She also dismissed as a "rabbit trail" DeLay's contentions lawyers approved all actions by him and two aides. She said a lawyer cannot give someone permission "to violate the law," and the defendants came up with the lawyer story after getting caught.

The case was held up for five years with pretrial appeals by DeLay's co-defendants. The trial began Nov. 1. The jury heard 38 witnesses and received hundreds of pages of documents during 11 days of testimony.