Once considered one of the rising stars in a new generation of Democrats in Congress, Reynolds listened with no visible emotion as the jury delivered its sweeping verdict, convicting on all 12 charges against him.

Later, his arm around his wife, Marisol, Reynolds walked out of the Cook County Criminal Courts Building as a mob of reporters, photographers and television camera crews pursued him shouting questions. But Reynolds had nothing to say.

The only thing he would say is that I want to get home and be with my family, said Sam Adam, one of Reynolds’s lawyers.

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Adam said Reynolds will appeal the conviction on the grounds that Cook County Circuit Court Judge Fred Suria had allowed extraneous evidence to be introduced in the trial. He said he had not discussed with Reynolds what he will do about the remaining time in his second term in Congress, which runs until January 1997.

Under law, the conviction is not grounds for expulsion from the House. But the House could vote to remove Reynolds, who attracted national attention in 1992 when he defeated his controversial predecessor, Gus Savage, in the Illinois Democratic primary. Savage had become a lightning rod for racial animosity because of his vehement criticism of whites.

Adam said tape recordings of two lurid conversations between Reynolds and his chief accuser, Beverly Heard, were the key to the verdict. In the conversations, Reynolds spoke in lewd terms about having sex with Heard beginning in 1992, when she was 16.

The tapes are the key to the case, Adam said. If you believe the tapes and believe Beverly, that’s all you need.

Patrick King, 29, a student at Northern Illinois University and one of the jurors, confirmed Adam’s analysis. He said the jury would not have convicted Reynolds on the basis of Heard’s testimony alone, but became convinced of his guilt by other evidence, including the tape recordings and voluminous telephone records that prosecutors charged traced Reynolds’s frantic efforts to sidetrack the investigation immediately after he learned about it.

King said there were disagreements among the jurors, with the majority who favored conviction pressing the others to explain their doubts. But he said the jury of seven men and five women six of them white and six blackdid not split seriously along either sex or racial lines.

Reynolds, the father of three small children, faced a bleak political future even if he had been found not guilty. Now he faces the prospect of years in prison. Under Illinois law, conviction on the most serious charges, three counts of criminal sexual assault, carries a mandatory minimum sentence of four years in prison.

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The criminal sexual assault charges involve having sex with a person under 18 when the defendant is in a position of trust or authority with the sex partner. After about 14 hours of deliberation over two days, the jury also convicted Reynolds of three counts of aggravated sexual abuse, which were based on his having sex with Heard when she was 16, two counts of solicitation of child pornography and four counts of obstruction of justice.

The maximum penalty for conviction on all charges is 75 years.