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Bell corruption trial: Still no verdict after 17 days

By Corina Knoll
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Jurors in the Bell corruption trial adjourned Tuesday, again without a verdict in the trial of six former council members accused of raiding the small town’s treasury by pulling down extraordinary salaries.

Wednesday will mark the 18th day of deliberations -- nearly the same length of the testimony in the trial.

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Since being handed the case Feb. 22, the panel appears to have struggled to determine whether Luis Artiga, Victor Bello, George Cole, Oscar Hernandez, Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal misappropriated public funds by taking salaries of up to $100,000, beefed up by serving on city boards and authorities that rarely met.

Hernandez, Jacobo and Mirabal face 20 counts while Bello faces 16. Artiga faces 12 counts; Cole has eight. All face prison time if convicted.

Legal experts say the general rule of thumb when it comes to deliberations tends to be one day for every week of testimony. Anything longer could be a strong sign of a hung jury or a deadlock on some counts.

The four-week trial began Jan. 24.

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-- Corina Knoll

L.A. Now
Corina Knoll

Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

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