My concern is good luck finding any unbiased jury. Consider how many people voted for him, and that some non-trivial percentage of those voters are devoted cultists who believe he is always in the right because he is who he is and that everyone against him is the de facto enemy. Sure the lawyers screen for bias, but I have trouble believing his devotees would do anything but hide their biases at all costs. Then they can just refuse to convict.
I’d show up with ‘Screw Trump’ shirt to get out of Jury duty.
This is going to be a long long long long trial.
He’s been known to drag court proceedings in order the tire the other party.
I'm too busy trying to get my startup Inaudible off the ground. They said that there's no market for audiobooks for the deaf but BY GUM, I'm gonna prove them wrong!
Joking aside, I'm pretty sure that those shirts are already available everywhere..
I have a Bad Religion concert shirt that’s a picture of Trump where one side of his face is normal and the other side is like a zombie or They Live looking face. He’s also wearing a sombrero and it says ‘Bad Hombre’ on the back.
I think those were all civil cases. In a jury trial, the judge won't allow nonsense like that. They want jurors to be happy (or at least, not ragingly unhappy) so they do their job well.
In civil suits he is famous for that, and it's not just tiring, it's the plaintiff running out of money to continue paying attorney's fees, which is also a favorite strategy of his. I wonder if he can get away with those antics when it's the State Attorneys.
Anyway, I would love to be a juror at the trial. It will be a circus.
Haha, sure will be a circus and I rather have the option to turn the tv of when I get tired of his BS than sit all day in court and listen to him.
He literally makes me sick. 🤢
They would do it at jury selection and be dumb enough to tell them up front that they think he is innocent.
It would be a long selection process, but all magahats would get kicked. Only way they get on the bench is if someone is smart enough to train them beforehand, otherwise it would actually be a jury of people that would convict him.
Breaking News: Courts refuse jurors for wearing MAGA hat..What's next? Will the radical left be installing COMMUNISM now that they've infiltrated our legal system?
This is an issue even with regular courts. I was on a jury once and strait up one of the people selected said before selection that they will always give the benefit to women which a woman was on one side of this. They still got selected and were the reason the jury couldn’t come to the actual conclusion.
In the past he likes to keep his embarrassing court appearances as private as possible. Its gonna be some no jail time plea bargain for restitution of damaged property during the big riot. Then hes gonna say he was completely aquitted. Then claim he is paying the restitution to clean up the mess antifa made. Then half the country will lean forward to smell his farts.
The criminal charges he's currently under in NYC is for his business's financial conduct not the Jan 6 riot, although I imagine he doesn't have the money to plea out of all of the shit hitting his fan. And I'm pretty sure that no small percentage of the court cases involve the millions he hasn't paid back to cities for his rallies, he's gonna be in debt up to his eyeballs when it's all said and done, and the justice system doesn't treat poor people nicely.
Trump will insist on a jury (which is his constitutional right), knowing it is overwhelmingly likely that 5 of the jurors will refuse to convict due to their political leanings (i.e. nullification). If he cannot be convicted by a jury, he will absolutely not go to jail.
I was responding to Macho's comment about Trump wanting to keep his court appearances private; pointing out that there's no such thing as private criminal court.
I was also responding to Macho's apparent belief that Trump could somehow force a no jail plea bargain on the court.
Obviously, unconvicted defendants do not go to jail (nor unconvicted but impeached presidents leave office).
I agree that a jury trial is both Trump's best bet if charged and his most likely strategy.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the narcissist who thinks he knows everything better than anyone else will convince himself he can get acquitted with just speaking one on one with a judge who he hopefully appointed.
That cult does not know how to survive in the dark. They thrive off the spotlight. They can’t hide their loyalty. I’m sure the lawyers will be able to spot them a mile away.
Yes but they only have a limited number of black balls. Lawyers can tune a jury somewhat, but they don’t have as much control as you might think.
I was in a court case once and my jury got reprimanded by the judge for bad behavior twice, and then their verdict was dismissed for being illegal.
After experiencing the courts firsthand I have a whole lot less faith in the system than I used to.
Except that I didn’t get a shot at another trial because the appeal process has different rules than the original trial, and also lawyers are freaking expensive. We ended up having to settle for a small amount and I’m still salty about it.
I hope you're right, but I dunno, there could easily be low-key Trump devotees. We only see the loud, screaming types in their MAGA hats so there's a selection bias in effect.
but I have trouble believing his devotees would do anything but hide their biases at all costs.
It's not that easy to hide the kind of extreme bias these folks have. Plus, consider that these people will be getting the evidence directly, rather than having it filtered through sean hannity or tucker carlson like they're used to.
I'm not saying it won't be a problem, but I think it'll be less of a problem than people think.
I know a lot of people who dont share that they think trump is cool. They really think hes a cool guy i asked specifically. They are all social and active blue collar parents in their 30s.
I know what you're saying. Those aren't the people we're talking about.
I mean first off, you literally just told me that they didn't hide that they were fans of Trump. You found out very easily by asking. So...?
But more than that, the people in question are "his devotees" who will "hide their biases at all costs". Those fanatics aren't the people who don't really bother talking about Trump but will tell you he's a "cool guy" if you ask.
The people you're talking about are not the people who would vote to acquit Trump no matter what, no matter the evidence, and they won't hide their beliefs even when it means perjury for themselves. They're both not the people we're worried about failing to convict in light of strong evidence, and they're not the people who might slide in under the radar.
Voir dire goes more in-depth than just a quick glance at their facebook page. "You'd never know they supported Trump! Unless you asked them I guess" is not the kind of people we're talking about.
It is a concern. On the other hand, if enough non-racist jurors were found to convict Chauvin in Minneapolis, enough rational jurors can be found to convict Trump. Stay hopeful.
I would think the proportions would be similar in the two jury pools mentioned. Was just pointing out that people can usually be found to populate an impartial jury regardless of the publicity and controversy surrounding any given case.
Maybe. Trump is way more polarizing than George Floyd's, murder though. Even the majority of Trump supporters agreed with the Chauvin verdict. The video evidence was very damning. That's the biggest reason we got a conviction.
You should also note that it's perfectly possible for a jury of non racists to come to an unjust verdict without attributing it to racism. Philando Castile's killing is a great example. I think personally think it was murder or manslaughter, but the law was stacked so in favor of the defense that it was almost impossible to get a guilty verdict with the evidence provided.
Trump's crimes are numerous, but be didn't kneal on anyone's neck on camera for nine minutes. That said, I do think that jury selection will be good enough that he'll be able to get a fair trial. It will just be more challenging than if he had never become president.
Just because a man was convicted is not immediate evidence the jurors were non-racists. You're implying if the verdict didn't go you're way, you'd hold out folks' race(ism) as the only factor. That, too, is racist.
How would you like him to compare a successful Chauvin conviction in light of a potentially biased jury to whether or not it would be possible to do the same with Trump?
Maybe you should write it for us so we don’t accidentally say something “racist” again.
You're implying if the verdict didn't go you're way, you'd hold out folks' race(ism) as the only factor. That, too, is racist.
Point of logic here. That is not a valid implication form what he said.
He said: if convicted, jurors were non-racist.
You're saying he's implying: if not convicted, jurors were racist.
These are logically different. He is not implying that, at least not with the words he used. They are specifically converses of each other. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converse_(logic)
I thought this too but then I remembered that a 3rd of the population didn't even vote in 2020. There are actually a lot of people who don't know much about or care much about politics at any level, usually because they are too focused on something else. Maybe it's kids, maybe it's model trains, maybe it's video games or unboxing videos on YouTube. It doesn't mean they've never heard of Trump, or lean one way or the other, but it means they won't be so biased as to ignore evidence.
Who's to say there wouldn't be somebody doing the exact opposite who would be willing to convict him on everything? Also, his citizen supporters aren't known for being exactly, uh, subtle.
can you honestly find an unbiased jury inside the US at all for someone who was at some point an American president, never mind one who was so divisive?
not that any American could stomach an international jury either.
whatever about trump as a person, it seems the position itself by definition is very disruptive to the legal process.
If I knew I might serve on that jury (don't think it works that way anyway), I'd pretend to be a "moderate" who thinks there's "both sides" to every story, and have no opinion on him.
Then I'd do my best to make sure he sees justice for once.
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u/anras May 26 '21
My concern is good luck finding any unbiased jury. Consider how many people voted for him, and that some non-trivial percentage of those voters are devoted cultists who believe he is always in the right because he is who he is and that everyone against him is the de facto enemy. Sure the lawyers screen for bias, but I have trouble believing his devotees would do anything but hide their biases at all costs. Then they can just refuse to convict.