Jurors asked for additional fans because the room where they are deliberating was stuffy.
The jury also wanted a dictionary.
After joking about whether it would be unpatriotic to give the jury an Oxford English Dictionary, Zagel asked jurors instead to tell the court which words they wanted defined.
The jury indicated the confusion was over one word—"usurious," which appears on the second page of the indictment. The defendants are accused of charging "usurious" rates on high-interest "juice loans."
The word is defined in most dictionaries as "of or constituting usury," which is defined as the practice of lending money at excessively or illegally high interest rates.Before the court had supplied an answer, jurors told the judge that they were able to glean the definition from the indictment itself.
Thanks to Jeff Coen
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