COLUMNS, CRIMINAL LAW May 30, 2024
A Manhattan Canned Hunt: The Trump Jury is Out But is the Case in the Bag?
Jonathan Turley1/2
Below is my column in The Hill on the ongoing deliberations in the Trump trial. The instructions in the case raised concerns that the deliberations could become alegal version of a canned hunt, where the prey is trapped in a cage or fenced in areas to be dispatched. Elements of the instructions are disturbing in reducing what is required to convict the former president.
Here is the column:
Today the jury began its deliberations in the trial of former president Donald Trump. Before jurors left, however, Judge Juan Merchan framed their deliberations in a way that seemed less like a jury deliberation than a canned hunt.
For many of us, the Trump trial has seemedotherworldly, a vaguely familiar proceeding wherecommon elements of a trial seem to have been flipped.
Even before the jury instructions, the trial was controversial for both liberal and conservative commentators. At the start of closing arguments, most honest observers were still wondering what the prosecutors were alleging as to the crime that Trump was allegedly concealing with the falsification of business records.
Then came the closing arguments. Around the country, it is standard for the government to go first with a closing to allow the defense to respond. The government is then given the privilege of a rebuttal after the defense rests. In New York, thedefense must go first, giving the government free rein over its closingwith no risk of contradiction from the defense. With the exception of objections, any abusive or improper arguments are left to the judge to address.
In the case of Judge Merchan, that protection was all but absent as theprosecution engaged in flagrant violationsfrom offering testimony on unestablished facts to directly contradicting prior instructions. In one of themost egregious moments, Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury thatit is an established factthat former Trump counsel Michael Cohen committed a federal election law violation on the direct orders of Donald Trump. Merchan had repeatedly said thatCohen’s earlier plea could not be used to imply the guilt of Trump. Merchan overruled an objection and Steinglass proceeded, as he did earlier in trial, to repeat the false statement.
Merchan did nothing as Steinglass told the jury that Hope Hicks cried in court because she knew that she had destroyed Trump’s defense (Hicks has never explained why she cried). Merchan did nothing as Steinglass falsely told the jury that the media and political campaigns do not do what Trump did in seeking to kill and plant stories. (This ignored, for example, that the Clinton campaign did precisely that repeatedlyin the very same election, including with the false Russian collusion allegations).
It was only when Steinglass repeatedly instructed the jury on the law that Merchan finally sustained objections, at the end of his closing arguments…
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/05/30/a-manhattan-canned-hunt-the-trump-jury-is-out-but-is-the-case-in-the-bag/