Trump’s Jury
Is it even possible to find 12 impartial citizens to judge a figure so infamous?
NYT (“No Jurors Picked on First Day of Trump’s Manhattan Criminal Trial“):
The criminal trial of Donald J. Trump, the nation’s 45th president and the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee, started Monday with potential jurors assembling in a drab courtroom in New York City while Mr. Trump looked on.
Mr. Trump was charged in Manhattan, a deeply Democratic county and his former home, with falsifying nearly three dozen business records in an attempt to cover up a payment to a porn star, Stormy Daniels, who has said she had a brief sexual encounter with him in 2006.
[…]
The trial, which is expected to last weeks, has a fascinating list of potential witnesses: Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer turned apostate, who made the payment; Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who says she, too, had an affair with Mr. Trump; and Hope Hicks, a former aide to Mr. Trump. Ms. Daniels herself may testify.
Before any of that happens, a jury must be selected, a winnowing that began Monday.
[…]
It’s easy to forget how long it takes to do a little in legal settings. On Monday, the morning session was dominated by maneuvering by prosecutors and the defense, even as prospective jurors waited. By lunch, they were still waiting.
Jury selection could take days or weeks, and the trial itself may take two months. The Passover holiday could cause delays, Justice Merchan said, though he might make some of that up by holding hearings on court matters on Wednesdays, which was previously going to be an off day.
By afternoon, prospective jurors finally made their way into Justice Merchan’s courtroom. He warmly welcomed them, introduced the lawyers and Mr. Trump and read them a summary of the case.
Justice Merchan asked if any believed they could not be fair and impartial to the former president. Of the 96 prospective jurors in the room at that time, more than 50 raised their hands. They were immediately excused.
The remaining jurors were each asked 42 questions. By the end of Monday, 11 jurors had been questioned and two more were excused: a woman who said she could not be fair and a man who said his child’s wedding date could conflict with the trial.
As a Virginia resident, I’m not in the potential jury pool. Do I have very strong feelings about Trump? I can’t imagine the sentient adult who doesn’t. Could I be “fair” in hearing his case? I guess that depends on one’s definition. I would certainly vote to acquit him, despite my feelings about him, were the prosecution to fail to prove their case beyond reasonable doubt. But Trump, reading my volume of writing on him, certainly wouldn’t think he was getting a fair trial if I was one of the dozen judging his fate.
Beyond that, while it would surely be quite interesting to be involved in such a high-profile case, I would do pretty much everything in my power to avoid being trapped in a courtroom for months. To say nothing of the likelihood of Trump and his minions encouraging the harassment of my family and myself.
It seems likely that this jury will be comprised entirely of people who really, really want to be on it. Some will have very strong opinions about Trump that they’re hiding. Others will be hoping to cash in on the experience. Maybe some will just want to be part of history. That’s not exactly conducive to justice.
I know it’s in the Constitution and everything, but I’m not persuaded that a “jury of one’s peers” is really the best way to do this.
If we’re hell-bent on jury trials, we might be better served with professional juries with people of good character and some legal knowledge who can be seated more quickly and require less vetting and on-the-job training than the average plumber, or doctor, or hairdresser.
I remember as a jury foreman having to persuade the group that we couldn’t jump right to the award amount in a civil trial, that first, we needed to determine whether the defendant was even the cause of the problem (as it turned out the defendant was not liable).
Such an important system shouldn’t require a layperson to educate their peers who didn’t understand the jury instructions.
When you intermingle politics and personal danger with the complexity of the legal system, and the ramifications for both sides of the case, it feels foolish to have a mechanic, a dental assistant, and a florist making these decisions.
I feel I could be impartial as to the law. I don’t really understand the legal theory about how paying off a porn start to be quiet results in these charges and I’m open to the idea that what Trump did, while odious, doesn’t break the law. But I would have to say that I wouldn’t believe a word Trump himself had to say.
“Alexandra Petri” (Gift Link)
There is no perfect jury or juror, and the biggest scammers in the legal profession are jury consultants. That said, the vast majority of jurors take their oath very seriously and act in good faith, but I second JJ’s notion that it is an odd bird who *wants* to be on this jury, knowing the commitment of time and the potential to be harassed/intimidated by overzealous “patriots.”
I do not really see strong opinions as problematical.
Scientists with strong opinions about Newton’s laws of motion could set them aside for General and Special Relativity.
Astronomers with strong opinions about the size of the universe could set them aside when Hubble realized “nebula” could be external to the Milky Way.
You merely need be open minded about your strong opinions.
Jury instructions always require to consider only the evidence admitted at trial. As long as the jurors act in good faith and do that, no problemo.
Yes, the law says he’s entitled to a jury of his peers. But even around Wall Street it’s gotta be hard to find twelve Machiavellian narcissistic psychopaths?
@Charley in Cleveland:
While my gut reaction is “Exactly!”, I immediately start thinking about the horde of people willing to do just about anything to have their moment, reality TV, Court TV, eating Tide Pods, the list is endless.
More days than not, I’ll walk into the break room at work and see someone has turned the TV to one of those shows that have disgruntled roommates or ex-couples suing each other in a pretend court and think how much money I would be willing to spend to NOT be up on that screen, but they seem to have no shortage of people willing to be publicly humiliated for their 15 minutes of fame.
@Tony W:
Concur. There are countries that have such systems.
Weirdly, our current system, which was designed in a far different age, might not be the best way to to this.
@Charley in Cleveland:
This is my hope.
This is a case where the destination is far more important than the journey.
So long as Lardass gets convicted, it doesn’t matter how we get there.
@MarkedMan:
The charges are falsifying business records, not paying off a porn star.
If Lardass had cut a check marked “hush money,” no charges would have been filed. Instead he tried to hide it, by making false records to cover it up. That’s the crime.
I’m a very civically-minded person and don’t groan when I get a jury summons or try to get out of it. But in this case, if I’m honest, I probably would try to get out of it.
@Kathy: For perhaps the first time in my life I disagree with you entirely.
At least he’s not Black. Black men face all sorts of prejudice in jury rooms.
It’s an imperfect system. It will more likely be imperfect in a way that benefits him rather than harms him.
No lawyer wants a person familiar with the law on a jury. They are always to first to be struck from the jury pool. They want fools and idiots who can be convinced that black is white, hot is cold, and bad is good.
@MarkedMan:
The charge isn’t that he paid hush money. The charge is that he claimed the payment as a business expense in various places. This would normally be a misdemeanor in New York, unless it was part of some other felony crime. The payment appears — and like you, I would have to hear the testimony — to fit the definition of a felony-level federal campaign contribution violation.
The campaign violation part of the decision will come down to things that Trump was recorded saying about the purpose of the payment. Little things matter. Microsoft was found guilty of illegal monopoly actions largely on the basis of Bill Gates’s e-mails saying they should “cut off Netscape’s air supply.”
@charontwo: My knowledge or trump prior to his ride down the escalator was very shallow and I had no real opinion of him one way or the other as he was easy to ignore. His words when he reached the bottom of the escalator soon dispossessed me of any lack of bias I had.
My visceral reaction to the defendant probably means I couldn’t be objective. I’ve felt he should have been in prison sometime circa the late 80s/early 90s for money laundering, and his ability to weasel out of consequences strikes me as unfair and unjust. So.
There are MAGA types on X saying that if you live in NYC and are a supporter, it is your civic duty to say whatever you need to in order to get on the jury and cause a mistrial. This is problematic, to say the least.
Re: wanting to be on a jury.
Dear Wife has been on three juries over the past 50+ years. I’ve never been called. And I’ll confess to being somewhat jealous.
That’s not to say that I’d welcome being on a Trump jury, way too much potential exposure.
@Jen:
There is a jury questionaire drawn up by the judge with 42 questions. They would need to lie their asses off on that questionaire, also during verbal questioning. Could that work? Possibly but probably unlikely.
@Jen:
@charontwo:
Spock Mirror Principle: it’s hard for a savage to act civilized.
Any MAGAts trying this might likely wind up gilding the lily, and give themselves away. “I’m the most impartial person there is! No one is more impartial than I am! Manypeoplesaythat!!
@Andy: Never had any problems with being called. As soon as the prosecution and defense heard that I teach students to write persuasive/argument essays they both quickly agreed to send me on my way.
I’m having difficulty understanding people claiming their disdain for Trump would cause problems. Am I the only person here that is able to distinguish between Trump being a depraved individual and being skeptical about “campaign violations” counting as felonies?
@Kathy: I understand that, but don’t understand at any deep level why that is a criminal rather than civil offense
@Kathy: It’s important to set aside caricatures in this situation, I think. There are plenty of normal-seeming people out there who support Trump. No, I don’t understand it either, but there are quite a few of them, including people in my family and my husband’s. Not a red hat in sight, but they come up with things like “I don’t care for his personality, but he got things done.” If there’s a way to vomit mentally, I’ve done so.
@charontwo: People can convince themselves of just about anything, including how objective they are–those folks, along with those who think they are being clever, could end up on this jury.
@just nutha:
Defense attorneys have a tendency to look at me and scream “challenge” at the tops of their lungs. They tend to dislike the excessively educated.
I always go to the court summons. As soon as I say doctor I am let go. Ordinarily I think the claim made by George Carlin, or someone else, that a jury is made up of the 12 dumbest people who couldn’t figure out a way to get out of jury duty has some merit. However, I agree with James that this case is different. Most people will avoid it but there are going to be people who want to be on this jury and not for good reasons.
Steve
@OzarkHillbilly:
My wife has been called for jury duty several times and each time was dismissed by the clerk of courts, since she was a social worker. The explanation was always, no attorney was ever going to allow her to sit on a jury.
Curiously, I’ve never been called.
@Steven L. Taylor: I respectfully disagree, Steven. I retired last year after 49 years and hundreds of jury trials, probably more than three hundred. At least in my experience, the jurors nearly always get it right. There is something about a jury trial and the solemnity of the proceedings that causes the jurors to follow the judge’s instructions and do their duty. I’ve tried a number of bench trials (judge only) and for some types of proceedings they work fine, but criminal trials where the accused’s life or liberty is at stake I’ll take a jury every time. I think most trial lawyers, prosecutors and defense counsel alike would agree.
@Jen:
The reasonable people who make you want to mentally vomit*, are not the MAGAts that think it necessary to defraud the state to aid a felon.
And, really, it’s hard not to caricature people who caricature themselves.
*BTW, just vomit physically all over them. They deserve it.
I have been called for jury duty several times in Jackson County IL. Served on one Grand Jury and sat for a criminal trial on a petit jury. The defendant’s lawyer offered no defense. When it was his turn to speak after the prosecution presented it’s case all he said was “the defense rests.” We actually deliberated long enough to get pizza for lunch and then voted to convict.
The last time I was called for jury duty, late ’90s (?), I sat with several other citizens in the courtroom for interviews. The judge told us that if we knew anyone associated with the case, including him, to mention it. As the prospective jurors were questioned by the lawyers I noticed the judge was looking down at the notes he was making. When it was my turn the first thing I said was that some twenty five years earlier I was a driver for the Carbondale Yellow Cab Company that the judge’s father owned and that I was sure that I had seen him and his brother at the cab stand. The judge stopped taking notes and looked up right at me.
Later during a break when I was in the hallway of the court house the judge, still in his robe walked right up to me, shook my hand and proceeded to tell me about the great memories he had of hanging out with the cab drivers at the cab stand. We swapped some names from the past. I told him it was good to see him again and let him do the talking. Needless to say I never sat in the jury box in a courtroom for one of his trials.
@MarkedMan: I’m having the same problem. Then again, in Crackerland Watergate was politics as usual, so I may not be the right guy to ask.
@Sleeping Dog:
Me either. I was thinking about this not long ago, when a local small business owner–she is the owner/primary baker at a very small bakery, and is the young mother of two small children under age 3–got called for jury duty for the THIRD time in five years. That isn’t even the first time I’ve heard of something like this…people getting called multiple times.
Do you think maybe they screen OUT frequent voters? I can sort of see that…if you’re that attuned to issues, maybe they don’t want you on a jury?
@a country lawyer: Wish two thumbs up were available for this. I’ve tried criminal cases as a prosecutor and civil cases (mainly medical malpractice) on both sides of the v. I’ll take 12 citizens over a panel of professionals almost every time. Lay jurors can be educated, but it’s really hard to move a professional off of his or her preconceived point of view, even (I’d say especially) when that point of view is wrong. I also think there’s a real benefit to having the law be tempered by the views of the people, though I will concede that the Trump years have done some damage to my faith in the wisdom of the crowd.
@Jen: It’s the “but he got things done” part that’s the disconnection for me. I can’t see how one makes a sentence with “Trump” as the subject and “accomplished” as the verb. 🙁
(Unless the direct object is “nothing.”)
@Sleeping Dog: I have only been called up for jury duty once. I got out of it without even going to the court house by telling the simple truth: I no longer lived in that county.
“Thank you very much sir. No need to come in.”
Easy. He told them so.
@just nutha: I mean, I think I could listen to testimony and jury instructions, weigh the evidence and figure it out. But just because it is ol’ Donald doesn’t mean I automatically convict.
It’s NOT a “hush money case”. Framing matters. It’s too easy to brush off a “hush money case”. The actual charges are for election interference through braking campaign finance laws. It SHOULD ALWAYS be spoken of as “an election interference case”, not a “hush money case.”
@Jen:
I’m pretty sure the law everywhere says that the jury duty summons must be random and based on registered voters. That said, my wife votes as frequently as I do.
@Jen:
The principle that saves Republicans is cum hoc, ergo propter hoc. You and I see the Obama recovery continuing for three years followed by a clusterfwck COVID response. They see three years of good economy followed by a pandemic, which can hardly be blamed on the prez. And FOX/GOP has created such a BizarroWorld of disinformation they see Trump’s COVID response as saving them from the insidious public health fascist/deep state plot to enslave us all by asking us to wear masks.
@Sleeping Dog: Yeah, I know…it’s just so weird that some people get called multiple times. It’s a strange sort of lottery.
That’s pretty much where I come out. I can be Jesuitical/Rabbinical/Pharisaic when necessary, and like to think that I can be objective when considering evidence. I think that OJ was guilty, and that the jurors who acquitted him were correct, given the evidence presented and the gross mishandling and manipulation of that evidence by the prosecution.
Trump, of course, has no conception of this kind of distinction. His brain is purely transactional, and has no synapses available for distinguishing objective truth from personal desire, even should he someday wish to do so.
The judge admonished Trump for muttering at a juror.
@MarkedMan: It doesn’t seem that many here agree with you on that point.
I am permanently excused from jury duty. Why did records of my existence stop in 1979 and then restart in 2001? Well, funny story, your honor.
“Meidas”
So it appears jury selection is going much quicker than most predictions I have seen – a few days, not weeks.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/16/trump-new-york-criminal-trial-hush-money/
snip
@charontwo:
This will severely hurt the Lardass legal strategy of delay until everyone is dead of old age.
What I’m looking forward to, is the appeal on the grounds he wasn’t allowed to intimidate witnesses, jurors, or the judge’s family.
@charontwo: they seem to be moving quite briskly. The judge is not letting Trump pull his usual tactics of delay.
I wonder if they got in all those exhibits for evidence in by the deadline? Again s slap across the face by the judge who told them how they had used their time was their own business ( so if they wanted to fritter it away with silly challenges rather than in actual trial prep they had to live with the consequences.)
@just nutha:..It doesn’t seem that many here agree with you on that point.
Since this trial is being adjudicated in the New York Supreme Court and the jurors are being drawn from Manhattan I’m guessing that there are few if any OTB denizens in the prospective jury pool.
Not sure where Federal Courts get their jurors. Maybe a random OTB scribe might get the call. If one is selected I don’t guess we could get daily reports from the jury room.
(Did I read recently that a contributor here lives in view of Central Park?)
@Mister Bluster: I’ve been called for both state and federal juries. In all cases so far, I showed up at the courthouse, sat around reading a book or doing my law homework, then was set free mid-afternoon with a check of roughly 15 bucks because all the cases had settled.
I’ve noticed that when many people talk of jury duty, they eagerly volunteer how often (and/or quickly) they get dismissed. Like it’s a badge of honor or something.
To be sure, I’ve done the same thing many times myself: [said with pride] “As soon as I disclose [occupation, opinion on X topic, etc], I am immediately let go.”
Upon reflection, it strikes me as kind of an odd thing to boast about. But we’re humans, and our status games are an odd hodgepodge of rules, so I guess it’s to be expected. And still…
@Mimai: I was called for jury duty twice, but I didn’t “get out of it.” The cases, whatever they were, were settled before I had to go to court.