A federal judge ordered jurors to keep deliberating in D.C. Councilman Trayon White’s bribery trial after they reported a deadlock, rejecting a defense push for a mistrial.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras told the panel to continue its work Friday after receiving a note that the jurors could not reach a unanimous verdict. The defense had asked for a mistrial. The judge said no.
By then, the jury had already spent 15 hours on the case against White, the Ward 8 councilman charged in a federal bribery scheme in Washington, D.C.
The Washington Examiner reported that Contreras kept the deliberations alive rather than end the trial when the deadlock note arrived.
White faces accusations that he took tens of thousands of dollars in bribes. Prosecutors say the money came with a promise: he would use his office to steer contracts.
He has denied the charges.
That is the core of the case now in the jury’s hands. A local lawmaker. Alleged cash. Alleged favors on city business. And a panel that, after 15 hours, still could not agree.
Deadlock notes are a stress test for any criminal trial. One path is a mistrial. Another is an order to keep working.
Contreras chose the second path. He received the jurors’ message that they could not reach a unanimous verdict and sent them back to deliberate anyway, over the defense’s objection.
No public breakdown of the split was described. No verbatim text of the note was released in the account of Friday’s proceedings. What was clear is the sequence: long deliberations, a failure to agree, a mistrial request, and a judge who ordered the work to continue.
For White, the stakes are obvious. He remains a sitting D.C. councilman while fighting claims that he sold his influence. For the public, the stakes are larger. Contract power is taxpayer power. When a jury is asked whether that power was traded for cash, the answer matters.
The charge framework is straightforward as presented in court coverage. White is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for a promise to steer contracts through his influence. He says he did not do it.
Jurors must resolve that conflict under the unanimous-verdict rule that governs a criminal trial. Their Friday note said they could not get there after 15 hours. The court told them to keep trying.
That order does not decide guilt. It decides only that the case is not over. The panel stays on the job. The mistrial request fails. The allegations remain in front of the same jurors who already said they were stuck.
D.C. residents are left watching a familiar test of public trust. City contracts are supposed to follow rules, not personal pipelines. When a council member is accused of taking money to lean on that process, voters deserve a clear verdict, not a shrug and a reset the moment deliberations get hard.
Accountability does not end because a jury gets tired. If public office was used as a for-sale stamp on city business, the public is owed a finished answer.
