After just 17 hours deliberation, despite having an epic set of instructions from the judge, the jury found former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell  and his wife Maureen of every major charge:

A federal jury on Thursday found former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, guilty of public corruption — sending an emphatic message that they believed the couple sold the office once occupied by Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson to a free-spending Richmond businessman for golf outings, lavish vacations and $120,000 in sweetheart loans.

After three days of deliberations, the seven men and five women who heard weeks of gripping testimony about the ­McDonnells’ alleged misdeeds unanimously found that the couple conspired to lend the prestige of the governor’s office to Jonnie R. Williams Sr. in a nefarious exchange for his largesse.

The verdict means that Robert McDonnell, the first governor in Virginia history to be charged with a crime, now holds an even more unwanted distinction — the first to be convicted of one.

He and his wife face decades in federal prison, although their actual sentences are likely to fall well short of that. U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer set a sentencing hearing for Jan. 6.

The former governor, a onetime Republican rising star considered for the 2012 vice-presidential nomination, was convicted of all 11 corruption-related counts brought against him. In a small victory, he was acquitted of lying on loan documents.

………

It was a stunning outcome for the couple, all the more so because in December, McDonnell declined to accept a plea agreement in which he would have been found guilty of just one felony count of lying on a loan document, according to people familiar with the case. Maureen McDonnell would have faced no charges.

He was unbelievably guilty, and he somehow figured that he would get out of it, so he now faces many more years in jail, and he sold the mother of his  children down the river.

I’m not surprised. 

He thought that he was on the proverbial “Mission from God” only, unlike the Blues Brothers movie, he wasn’t joking.

It’s the same cycle as one sees in ancient Greek tragedies: Koros to Hubris to Ate to Nemesis.  (Success to arrogance to madness to comeuppance)