1y ago

More than 500 New Yorkers set to be considered as jurors in Trump's "hush money" trial

www.cbsnews.com

Several hundred Manhattan residents were recently sent notices to appear at the borough's criminal court on April 15. Whether they know it or not, they're under consideration to be jurors in perhaps the most high-profile criminal trial in U.S. history.

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and Manhattan prosecutors are poised to scrutinize more than 500 potential jurors when his trial gets underway, according to two sources, a staggering number that reflects the magnitude of the case itself.

The attorneys will review their responses to lengthy questionnaires before interviewing many of them individually in court, with the goal of reaching consensus on who should be selected. It's an arduous process that's designed to ferret out prospective jurors who can't put aside their biases, and it could take days or even weeks.

Ultimately, the group will be whittled down to 12 jurors and a few alternates. They'll be tasked with deciding whether the former president illegally falsified business records after his attorney paid "hush money" to an adult film star days before the 2016 election. He faces 34 felony counts and has pleaded not guilty.

13 comments

It's going to be tough to find twelve people in Manhattan who don't hate Trump.
Black people hate him because of the Central Park 5.
Gay people hate him for abandoning Roy Cohn when Roy was diagnosed with AIDS.
Rich people hate him for destroying a landmark building he promised to preserve.
When the 2020 election results came in, people were dancing in the streets
- It's deeper than that, Arlo Guthrie's dad even wrote a song about Trump's dad being a racist slumlord back in the 50s...
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_Trump
  trump as president did away with the regulations. Biden put a new one in, but I'm not sure how good it is.
  But it would be naive to think Trump won't do the same day 1
  
  That's the first time I've ever heard of someone not just saying Woody Guthrie.
  
  After a lifetime of living in New York, and almost a decade of focusing on Trump daily, there is always some new bit of data about how terrible he is.
- Jury of your peers…it’s not the court’s fault if you’ve destroyed your rapport with them.
Now that is a jury duty I would be interested in showing up for. lol
- You would have to stay anonymous if chosen. Trump and conservative thugs will be watching to figure out who is on the jury, so they can squeeze them. It's like a damn mafia trial.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and Manhattan prosecutors are poised to scrutinize more than 500 potential jurors when his trial gets underway, according to two sources, a staggering number that reflects the magnitude of the case itself.
They'll be tasked with deciding whether the former president illegally falsified business records after his attorney paid "hush money" to an adult film star days before the 2016 election.
"This particular person may be the most famous defendant who has ever lived," said Levin, now a private attorney who previously represented the daughter-in-law of Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization's longtime chief financial officer.
In a case with this much pretrial publicity, the usual challenge of finding enough people willing or able to sit through the trial is thrown out the window, according to Pace University Law School Professor Bennett Gershman.
"What you do now with these jurors is you have a jury consultant, and they're sitting there with a laptop and they go through all the social media stuff, they Google them and they see who the hell they are," said Aidala, whose firm also represents former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 2020 election-related case in Georgia.
On March 26, Judge Juan Merchan issued a gag order restricting what Trump and others could say about potential witnesses, court personnel and district attorney staff, as well as their families.
The original article contains 1,243 words, the summary contains 229 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

13 comments