Earlier this week, members of a jury told an Akron judge they couldn’t agree whether two FirstEnergy executives paid off a top state regulator with a $4.3 million payment.
The mistrial defied a yearslong pattern of grave legal and financial consequences for the company, its alleged bribees, and the political professionals accused of facilitating the schemes.
Since 2020, FirstEnergy has essentially admitted to two, multimillion-dollar bribery schemes and paid more than $500 million in penalties to its customers and the government. Ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder is serving a related 20-year sentence in a federal prison for racketeering. Lobbyist Matt Borges served about 2.5 years and is now out on release. A Householder political adviser and a FirstEnergy Solutions lobbyist both pleaded guilty to racketeering and have testified against their former bosses.
Federal prosecutors won a jury conviction against Householder in Cincinnati in 2023. So what went wrong for prosecutors in Akron in 2026? How did CEO Chuck Jones and Senior Vice President of External Affairs Mike Dowling beat the rap, at least until a retrial?
In interviews with jurors who sat through six weeks of evidence, lawyers who worked on or observed the case, and others, no simple answer emerged of how the trial of the century ended in anti-climax. And it’s impossible to know whether any one change, or even all of them collectively, could have changed the outcome.
Instead, there are only theories, perhaps shaping a retrial at a date yet to be established. Here’s some of what Signal Statewide heard in on-record and background interviews, and other observations after watching two months of the trial.
Catch up on the FirstEnergy trial: Read all of our coverage on what’s been called the largest public corruption case in state history.
Facts kept out of evidence
One of the defining features of the trial in Akron was the material information Judge Susan Baker Ross kept from the jury.
That included things like the manner of death (suicide) of Sam Randazzo, the alleged bribe recipient; the findings of guilt of Householder and the evidence that led a jury there in 2023; regulatory investigations that substantiated the impropriety alleged by prosecutors; a 2009 contract signed by both Jones and Randazzo; testimony alleging that Jones asked another executive to lie to company investigators; and others.
“So, again, most of us did not know Householder was serving time,” said Jackie Steward, the jury forewoman, in an interview after the trial. She estimated the jury as roughly 10-2 in favor of conviction.
“So if I’m feeling that there’s a lot of information that we didn’t know, I’m sure those two juror holdouts are probably saying, ‘Wow, maybe I should have known about this.’”
One example in practice: Some of the prosecution’s theory of the case revolved around the idea that FirstEnergy entered into a “side deal” in the ratemaking process with Randazzo’s legal client that all parties failed to disclose.
But at trial, prosecutors weren’t allowed to introduce as evidence a November 2025 finding from the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio that fined FirstEnergy $250 million for failing to disclose the side deal. This created more space for the defendants to argue they had no obligation to disclose such an arrangement.
Thus, jurors were left to interpret a complicated set of facts without knowing the experts’ conclusions at the PUCO.
Undercharging – skipping the ‘$60 million bribe’
At least some of Judge Susan Baker Ross’ rulings to keep facts out of evidence trace back to a strategic decision by the prosecution. The state didn’t charge Jones and Dowling with bribing Householder.
The choice – made at a time when Attorney General Dave Yost was running for governor – allowed state officials to sidestep the touchy and often hazy distinction between an illegal bribe and a legal campaign contribution. And in fairness, it was made before a federal appeals court upheld the Householder conviction.
On the other hand, it blocked the road to introducing much of the evidence that proved convincing enough for a jury to reach the unanimous decision that Householder was a crook.
The state also declined to charge Jones in relation to claims made by Dennis Chack, another executive who was close to the CEO, that Jones asked him to lie to company investigators about a suspicious relationship with the company and Chack’s daughter.
Overcharging
At least one important party believed that prosecutors overcharged the case.
Judge Susan Baker Ross on March 10 dismissed the money laundering charges against both defendants after the bulk of the trial, finding the evidence “insufficient to sustain a conviction.”
And before the trial, Ross also dismissed theft charges that accused the two executives of stealing money from FirstEnergy they used to pay the alleged bribe. The charges left FirstEnergy as both a perpetrator (via its officers) and a victim of the same conduct.
A score of superlawyers vs. an understaffed prosecution
Most days, three lawyers appeared in court for the state, though others offered piecemeal support over the eight or so weeks of trial.
Compare that to the defense. The two defendants kept about 20 lawyers present shared between them. There were so many defense lawyers they needed to rent their own chairs. Even still, some sat in the courtroom’s public seats.
Recent court filings include 17 attorneys, some of which include remarkable pedigrees including presidential appointments and work on historic and high profile cases. The white-shoe firms of Tucker Ellis (Cleveland), Baker and Hostetler (Cleveland), Winston & Strawn (Chicago), and Vinson & Elkins (Washington D.C.) all descended on a little courtroom in Akron and made their heavyweight presence felt in the form of ceaseless objections, motions to professionally sanction Meyer, and repeated motions to dismiss the case. (The latter two categories were all dismissed.)
The legal machinery really kicks into gear when objections are made, according to Dave DeVillers, who initiated the case against Householder when he was the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney.
“What’s going on at that point is these associates are writing stuff down, running out of the courtroom, doing research, and trying to figure out, on the fly, if they should renew an objection or if they have a better argument for one,” DeVillers, now in private practice, said.
“As a defense attorney, it’s fantastic.”
The contrast was especially apparent in terms of who questioned which witnesses. Meyer questioned all but a small handful of comparatively minor witnesses. Meanwhile, the defense split up the workload far more evenly.
And the state couldn’t even keep its full bench. On March 9, as the defense was presenting its witnesses, Carol Hamilton O’Brien, a deputy attorney general with decades of experience who worked on the case for years, withdrew. Her husband died March 18, according to his obituary.
Signal Statewide requested interviews from the defense attorneys and Attorney General Dave Yost. Neither side agreed.
One of three alleged conspirators died
The prosecutors alleged a conspiracy of Jones, Dowling and Randazzo.
Randazzo – the chairman of the Public Utilities of Ohio, a powerful regulator – died by suicide in April 2024 while under state and federal indictment.
The defendants argued throughout trial that they didn’t pay Randazzo any bribe. Rather, they sought to pay money to Randazzo’s legal clients. Instead, Randazzo stole the money.
Randazzo likely would have denied the allegation of theft from his legal clients and the allegation of bribery. So in that sense, he’d be aligned with the prosecutors in his arguments.
But no jury will ever know what that defense might have looked like or how it might have impacted Jones and Dowling’s claims.
Ten years of backstory
The central thrust of the state’s case is that Jones and Dowling paid Randazzo a $4.3 million bribe just before he was appointed as a public servant in early 2019.
But perhaps given the theft defense, prosecutors wanted to demonstrate a financial relationship between FirstEnergy and Randazzo was rotten for the better part of a decade before he joined the PUCO.
The decision meant adding weeks of extra testimony and evidence.
The federal government in its presentation to jurors appreciated the value of brevity and succinctness more than the state’s effort, at least according to one Bloomberg Law analysis.
“FirstEnergy trial hung jury shows keeping it simple isn’t stupid,” its headline states.
The narrator was MIA
Most trials feature testimony from the law enforcement officers who led or worked on an investigation.
The concept went sideways in Akron after Bureau of Criminal Investigations agent Eric Lehnhart was administratively (i.e. noncriminally) accused of tampering with evidence in a non-FirstEnergy case.
Lehnhart said he became overwhelmed with politically charged voter fraud cases pushed by Yost before the 2024 election, coupled with the complicated nature of the FirstEnergy case, according to documents obtained by Cleveland.com.
“My analogy was that I had a cup for the task force that they just kept pouring water in and not taking any water out it,” Lehnhart said. “But then they set another glass next to it.”
He has since been fired. With that, the state lost its ability for an investigator to explain the process of gathering and interpreting evidence that led to the underlying charges.
In the federal case, FBI Special Agent Blane Wetzel played an effective narrator before the fact witnesses substantiated his findings.
Defense lawyers sought to call Lehnhart as a witness to damage the state’s credibility. He declined to testify, citing his constitutional rights against being forced to incriminate himself under oath.
As Steve Grimes, a Dowling attorney, quipped at trial to the judge, an investigator alleging public corruption who is invoking his rights against self-incrimination is a bad look for the state.
‘Linear thinkers’
Steward, the jury forewoman, said in an interview that she wishes prosecutors made the timeline of events a bit clearer. But after six weeks, it was all there for her. She said some jurors were too ‘linear’ of thinkers and unwilling or unable to read between the lines when it comes to actors who know not to be too explicit when structuring a bribe.
She said she and 8 or 9 other jurors saw more than enough of a pattern to vote to convict.
After the trial, the judge allowed lawyers to interview the jurors, which Steward found revealing.
“During our debrief, agent Matt Meyer reminded us that white‑collar cases are inherently challenging because they involve multiple parties, layers of evidence, and overlapping laws. Hearing that helped put things into perspective,” she said.
Conceptual flaw?
Scott Pullins, a Householder attorney, noted two forces that supported the defense.
For one, at the conceptual level, he said prosecutors simply misunderstood the nature of the $4.3 million transaction.
“I think to me, the bottom line is this never looked like bribery,” he said.
He also noted that Ross, the judge, wisely allowed Jones and Dowling to mount the legitimate defense that they were following the advice of their lawyers.
A federal judge blocked Householder from pursuing this argument in 2023. Prosecutors in Akron sought a similar ruling, arguing that such a line of defense is illegitimate given the way Jones and Dowling failed to provide all the pertinent facts to the lawyers to yield proper legal advice.
A brash interruption
Ross, the judge, made a few unusual comments during the trial. She publicly praised the green shoes worn by Jones’ wife on St. Patrick’s day. She vocally excused Jones’ unusual interaction at a lunch break when he spoke with a witness who received an immunity deal to testify against him.
But one stood out.
In criminal trials, prosecutors, who bear the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, get the opportunity to speak to jurors first and last after the defense.
As Meyer made his parting words after a long six weeks, Steve Grimes, an attorney for Dowling, objected to his characterization of the evidence regarding an “unsigned” document.
The issue was a key contract between FirstEnergy and Randazzo’s company. Of more than 20 million records produced by FirstEnergy, no signed copy has been found and introduced as evidence. Not a single witness testified to having definitively ever seen one.
Ross sided with Grimes and told him off sternly in a tough rebuke from the bench.
“The evidence is no one has seen a signed agreement. No one has said that it was not signed. Not one witness. If you want, I’ll continue to misstate – state what I think the evidence is, which I’m sure you don’t want me to do. So let’s stick to what the evidence actually shows,” she said.
Meyer went on to make his point, emphasizing the lack of evidence of a signed copy of the contract ever existing. Rendon, a lawyer for Jones, objected.
“Am I permitted to argue my case?” Meyer, visibly frustrated, asked.
“Go ahead,” said Ross, with a sigh, reminding him he can only do so “in line with the rules.”
What’s next in the FirstEnergy case
Judge Susan Baker Ross scheduled a hearing in the case for April 8. There, all parties are expected to pick a date for the retrial.