Judgment day looms for Donald Trump in New York | CNN Politics

girlfreddy@lemmy.ca to News@lemmy.world – 120 points – Judgment day looms for Donald Trump in New York | CNN Politics
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His reputation, future, and even perhaps the White House’s destiny, will on Wednesday be placed in the hands of 12 citizens of his native New York City, proving that not even once-and-possibly future commanders in chief are above the law.

Seven men and five women jurors will retire for deliberations on Trump’s six-week hush money trial after Judge Juan Merchan instructs them on the law and their duties. No jury in American history has faced such a task — deciding whether a former president and presumptive major party nominee will be convicted of a crime. And while the jury, which can deliberate for as long as it needs, is bound to decide its verdict on 34 felony charges on the testimony and evidence in the case alone, its decision will reverberate across the nation and the world at a critical moment of the 2024 presidential election.

The trial slogged toward its end on Tuesday in nearly 10 hours of closing arguments that burst into open hostility between rival lawyers.

“You have to put aside the distractions, the press, the politics, the noise. Focus on the evidence and the logical inference that can be drawn from that evidence,” prosecution lawyer Joshua Steinglass told the jury.

“In the interest of justice and in the name of the people of the state of the New York, I ask you to find the defendant guilty. Thank you.”

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I think I'll wait for the verdict and sentencing to see whether he's above the law or not

I predict a guilty verdict for most/all counts and an especially light sentence.

That's optimistic.

I am expecting at least 1 Trump loyalist in the jury who will refuse to agree to any guilty verdict, resulting in a hung jury and a mistrial.

A single holdout doesn't necessarily mean a hung jury. If there is evidence of juror misconduct, like a juror making any indication that they never intended to be impartial, despite what they agreed to before the trial started, they can be removed and replaced by a backup.

There are 6 backup jurors for this case.

As a European, I’ll never get why Americans think it’s ok to let the general public who are 85% fucking morons be the deciding factor in complicated legal cases. Why do you even have judges and lawyers when in the end they have nothing to decide?

And some bullshit exception will be made so he can still run for the Presidency because someone will allow him to serve his sentence after his potential term. Either that or he'll be made to have some aide follow him around and pretend to act like an ankle alarm because he has a brand to uphold and a real one would cause harm.

The scary thing: There are people out there who will change their vote depending on whether or not he's convicted.

If he's actually convicted and gets any sort of nontrivial sentence I will buy a tub of Ben and Jerry's Churro ice cream and eat the entire thing

I hate the gravitas this article is placing on his role! They are deciding, if a person, is guilty of a crime. It doesn’t matter who they were or what they might be. The preferential treamtment needs to stop.

Wow, literally the first sentence and already this article is full of shit.

His reputation is set in stone already. No matter what the jury decides he will appeal, and keep appealing until there's no one left to appeal to. He will not drop out of the race even if he is jailed (spoiler alert, he won't be), but assuming hell freezes over he'll still get at least 40 million votes.

Fuck articles like this. Why even post this click-bait trash!?

He's such a low bottom feeder he'll appeal if they find him not guilty on every charge.

He'll be convicted of at least some of the counts, but will immediately begin appealing the decision and won't face any consequences before the election.

Maybe the fact that he's now a "convicted felon" will sway some people, but my guess is that most will simply move their own internal goalposts "since it's still being decided on appeal"

I've already seen bumper stickers to the effect of "The people decide the president, not the courts." I doubt that a guilty verdict will sway anyone's opinion, sadly.

Fuck that, you pessimistic piece of dust. Just gotta put all your doubts and fears out there. Boo hoo.

He's going down. People are going to notice. It will change people's minds. All of them? Nope, fucking obviously. But it will change plenty of minds. Even if it's from a Republican vote to "I'll vote Republican when they can field a non-felon."

Keep your shitty pessimism to yourself.

“This time I’m going to catch him”

  • Wile E. Coyote

A lot of things have to go right for him to be convicted, just one juror having doubts will let him walk. And because Americans are provably more likely to be narcissists who love to be “the devil’s advocate” to feel important, I can’t see any situation where they all agree and he’s convicted.

Which of course in his braindead supporters minds will mean that he’s also not guilty in all the other cases.

I was wrong! WTF I love the American justice system now?

Can you imagine trump in a terminator movie?

If they make Terminator vs. Predator, he’d be a natural fit for the Predator given he likes to rape minors.