No. of Recommendations: 17
Where did I say trump should be treated differently? You said that because of his position as a former president and a major party candidate,
his case needed to be a lay up, clear and easy to understand.
But we don't require that for other people. We charge people for complex crimes
all the time. We charge people when the facts are complicated, when the case isn't a lay-up, when things
aren't easy to understand. So why should it be necessary to have a "lay up" case in order for Trump to face charges.
This isn't about media diet - I've read Turley's writings on the matter, and I think he's simply wrong on a number of points (or more charitably, he's presenting as
settled various positions that he's just advocating are the case). As was the article you cited in this thread, claiming that it's "insanity" to not provide written instructions to the jury. Which it would be in
some states, of course. Here in Florida, for example, jury instructions are
required to be in writing.
But in New York, judges
aren't authorized to provide jury instructions in writing. The New York Penal Law only authorizes a very limited number of things to be taken by the jurors into their deliberations, and written jury instructions are not among them. It can be reversible error to give them jury instructions - especially if those jury instructions include the text of a statute, which is
not allowed to be sent in with them. So the New York courts have
reversed convictions if the judge sends written jury instructions into deliberations, as with People v. Owens:
Unlike the marshaling of evidence — which is statutorily authorized (CPL 300.10), and constitutes error only when an imbalance results in prejudice to defendant (see, People v Culhane, 45 N.Y.2d 757, 758, supra — the distribution of written instructions to the jury is not expressly authorized by law, and error in such submissions cannot be deemed harmless.https://casetext.com/case/people-v-owens-128But because media outlets will repeat this nonsense without taking the time to actually check if it's true ("Does New York authorize written jury instructions? Should we check before running this quote?"), a lot of people
do come away with an incorrect understanding of what's going on in the court. That might work to the political benefit of Trump, but it's certainly not a reason he should escape prosecution for criminal behavior.
