Did his instructions violate the Constitution?
On Friday, defense attorney Randy Zelin and former Trump lawyer Tim Parlatore raised a constitutional concern about Judge Juan Merchan’s jury instructions in former President Donald Trump’s trial.
Judge Merchan told the jury they didn’t need to agree unanimously on which specific “other crime” Trump committed. Instead, they could pick from three different crimes to convict him.
According to Zelin and Parlatore, who shared their views on “CNN Special Report,” these instructions were so flawed that an appeals court might overturn the conviction.
The Daily Caller reports:
“I hate to do this, but I would be remiss if I didn’t,” Zelin said. “Whether you are driving in a Ford or a Ferrari, if someone gives you bad directions, you’re going to end up lost. And those jury instructions were just a complete, just take the Constitution, throw it out a window, burn it, shoot it and hang it.”
“I think that the jury instructions had a very key flaw here, which is the falsification of business records had to be in furtherance of some other crime and there wasn’t really great instructions on what that other crime was,” Parlatore said in response to a question about whether the jury instructions might lead to an appeals court overturning the verdict. “Under New York State law, they’re not required to say which it is. But when they do, the judge has to instruct them on that specific crime. And the problem here is they don’t have to prove that they actually committed that other crime. They don’t have to prove that they actually had FEC violations, but they have to show that what they intended to do was in fact a crime. And that I think is really the shortfall in the jury instructions is the lack of an explanation to this jury as to the federal election law.”
The jury on Thursday convicted Trump in the case brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on all 34 counts of falsifying business records.
CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig and criminal defense attorney Michael O’Mara on Friday said Trump’s appeal will plausibly be based on the case’s unprecedented nature and Merchan not sequestering the jury.
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Even a broken analog clock is right twice a day. Besides, who better than anyone so use to being sued knows the value of clear & concise legal instructions.