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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – In the hierarchy of our justice system, a jury verdict reigns supreme. If a jury returns a guilty verdict, your goose is cooked.
Short of rampant jury misconduct, imagine, hypothetically, the mafia bribing a jury member, jury verdicts are almost impossible to overturn.
And, you recall, a jury in Manhattan found Donald Trump guilty of 34 felony counts. It’s hard to make that go away. And yet on Friday that’s exactly what happened. Judge Juan Merchan indefinitely postponed sentencing in the case, and invited Trump’s legal team to file a motion to have the case dismissed. That’s going to happen. Donald Trump’s haters will be denied their dream of seeing Trump led out of a courtroom in handcuffs.
I think the setting aside of a jury’s guilty verdict is telling. Judge Merchan certainly ruled as a partisan during the trial, but he’s not ignorant of the law. He certainly knows that the case against Trump was novel. A business records charge is usually a misdemeanor, and, in this case the statute of limitations had already run. The case was brought back as a felony because of a new allegation: that falsified business records were part of an election fraud scheme. There were several problems with that argument. Trump’s campaign would not have had to report hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels until after Election Day. Election law violations in a federal election are heard in federal, not state, court. The exact nature of election violation was not part of the criminal indictment in the case, nor was evidence on that point presented to the jury. It was revealed for the first time during the prosecution’s closing argument.
Judge Merchan isn’t ignorant of those problems with the case, which would all be explored further on appeal. What I suspect the judge knew all along is that this was indeed a lawfare case, designed specifically by a political candidate’s opponents to try to throw him in jail. Sooner or later the case of New York v Trump would land in front of an adult court, and it would be dismissed.
And with that, hopefully, the era or lawfare comes to an end.
Remember, you, the voters, were a more convincing jury than those 12 who sat in judgement at Trump’s trial.
Chris Conley
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