Who is MSW?
Honestly I’m not nervous until early next week. That’s a lot of really complicated charges and jurors take this kind of thing seriously. They could all think he’s guilty but not be 100 percent sure on each of the 34 counts. I once had a child murder trial where the jury took 3 days to convict, it really made me sweat bullets. Afterwards I spoke with one of the jurors at length (we actually ended up as neighbors years later). He indicated that the jury had voted to convict the murderer of murder within the first 10 minutes and then spent the next 3 days arguing over some minor downcharge misdemeanors I had included for other incidents of child abuse.
Nah. Rule of thumb: 1 day of deliberation for each week of trial, and this is 34 counts of really hyper technical business records that is going to be difficult to keep track of. It’s possible to get a verdict by Friday I suppose, but I”m not sweating bullets if they don’t, unless we start getting notes that make it seem like they’re possibly deadlocking.
The jury has been deliberating for 3.5 hours.
3.5 hours and no notes is somewhat promising.
If the jury doesn’t return a verdict by the end of today he’s going to be calling it total exoneration already.
@jman are many of the charges logically separable as far as the evidence they have or it likely all or nothing?
We have our first note. Asking for portions of Pecker’s testimony concerning the Trump Tower meeting where Pecker testified that the two men reached an agreement with Trump and Michael Cohen, same section of testimony. Could go either way on whether this is a good thing or bad thing for them to be asking for.
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Each count is a different business record. I could logically separate them if they are struggling to come to the conclusion that Trump was responsible for all of them.
They’re not that deep yet into the individual charges if they’re still concentrating on this piece of it. This is the meeting where Trump came up with the catch and kill scheme. I’m mildly shook.
On the other hand, Pecker’s testimony was really fucking damning. If I was the prosecutor, I certainly wouldn’t be beside myself that these are the first notes. We can start to worry when they ask to hear the definition of reasonable doubt again.
More readback requests and request for part of all instructions again, jury to be sent home for the day. Hard to make much if anything from this.
Mueller She Wrote
I’m not getting shook, seems nothing changed. Even if you want to convict Trump some are going to think you want to go through the motions of being very diligent on everything IMO even if made up mind. Actual holdouts ignored I bet there at least one person planning to convict who still wanting to go through the motions for a little bit
If they’re asking for read backs then it means that there are at least some jurors who aren’t sure about convicting on at least some counts. You don’t ask for testimony read backs if everyone just agrees he’s guilty of everything and they are “going through the motions.” That said, read backs are a really common part of the practice and certainly nothing to worry about as the prosecution.
I was saying I bet there at least one person in there who has internally made mind up but pretending to be undecided and is acting that way because they think could benefit them in future in someway once the stories of the Trump jury deliberations leech out
(Obviously could go either way what they already decided on)
Yeah, that’s wishcasting. People just don’t behave that way in my experience. They’re not asking for readbacks unless there’s some point related to those readbacks that they are arguing over.
Do jurors generally assume there going to be 100 books/movies/TV shows/etc scrutinizing themselves personally? Like you were saying before this seems unprecedented so seems would expect quite a bit of abnormal behavior
You’re assuming some kind of fancy play syndrome in the extreme. I guess anything is possible, but it seems pretty unlikely.
Meh, on one of the jurors I was on we sent a couple of law Qs for the judge because a couple of folks wanted clarification. In our case the judge said his instructions were sufficient. The rest of us were able to provide the clarification, at least enough to come to a verdict.
I don’t read much into today’s requests. The testimony specifics bad for Trump. Neutral on the instructions. Laws and definitions can be quite non-intuitive to lay people.