As I write this, jury selection is going on in the kangaroo court in New York City that is to be hearing the "case" against former President Trump. The case, such as it purports to be, is based on the accusation of misstating a payment made in conjunction with a non-disclosure agreement with Stormy Daniels, the porn star.
That particular offense under state law is actually a misdemeanor, not a felony, and under the law the statute of limitations is two years, meaning that the charges for the particular offense expired years ago. However, Alvin Bragg, the alleged District Attorney, has managed to get this case into court by contorting it into a felony.
How'd he do that? By trying to show that the NDA declaration was done in connection with some sort of campaign expense fraud. Such a connection makes the original offense a felony, not a misdemeanor, which extends the statute of limitations. The problem there, which would have gotten the case laughed out of any court in the USA not in NYC or LA, is that the "campaign expense fraud" that was supposed crime to which the misdemeanor was "linked", was already investigated by the hyper-Trump-hating Southern District of New York, and the state could not come up with evidence to file charges.
Work with me here ... Bragg had to try to turn a misdemeanor into a felony, and the only way that Bragg could do that was to tie it to a second "crime", which according to its previous investigation, didn't happen and couldn't be prosecuted. That there is indeed a judge who hasn't already belly-laughed the case out of court long ago is an astonishing indictment of the justice system in New York.
I had not paid much attention to the case, figuring that, if and when it had gotten to trial, I would pay attention to it then. So I wasn't very aware of the circumstances until very recently, and was pretty astonished to hear how tortured the logic of the prosecution had to be to get to the point where even a New York judge would take it on.
Naturally, I started to think about how a jury would handle that tortured logic, and whether the idiotic pathway taken by Bragg would be seen by at least a few of them as an idiotic pathway, one that they would prefer never be used in the justice system ever again. I really would have wanted to have gotten on that jury. Really.
That thought process was had over my morning coffee before starting work, as the news was on the TV and I was watching. Yeah, I'd really like to get on that jury ... as long as I didn't have to live in Manhattan, or go to Manhattan, or get within 400 miles of Manhattan. Yeah, I'd like to be on that jury.
Literally, 15 minutes later, I checked my emails from the night before.
Included in the emails was one from the United States Postal Service which, like many Americans, I get first thing in the morning to tell me what mail will be delivered in my mailbox today. It's a nice service, since we don't actually have a mailbox but, rather, a cluster box a ten-minute walk from our house. If there's nothing of note to be delivered that day, I don't have to bother going to the mail kiosk that day.
I'm not lying. Today, 15 minutes after expressing a silent wish to be on the jury for an absurd case that shouldn't even have gotten to the impaneling of a jury, my morning mail notice included a letter from the United States District Court, from Raleigh, NC. I had to bust out laughing -- no question that letter is a summons for jury duty.
No, they won't be hauling me up to New York to sit as a venireman for the Trump trial. But I'll be back again as one here, over 40 years after serving on the jury for a murder trial -- https://uberthoughtsusa.blogspot.com/2017/12/remembering-my-murder-panel.html for those of you who missed that piece from 2017.
Be careful, very careful, what you ask for.
Copyright 2024 by Robert Sutton Like what you read here? There are over 1,000 posts from Bob at www.uberthoughtsUSA.com, and after four years of writing a new one daily, he still posts thoughts once in a while as "visiting columns", no longer the "prolific essayist" he was through 2018, but still around. Appearance, advertising, sponsorship and interview inquiries cheerfully welcomed at bsutton@alum.mit.edu or on Twitter at @rmosutton
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