The jury note contains 4 requests: (1) David Pecker testimony regarding phone convo during investor meeting, (2) Pecker Testimony related to McDougal's life rights agreement, (3) Pecker testimony regarding Trump Tower meeting, and (4) Cohen testimony regarding Trump Tower meeting (via Anna Bower)
Kyle Cheney jumps on the speculation train early, but why not:
"Apply all the caveats here, but first instinct is this is not welcome news for Trump. Prosecutors spent a lot of their lengthy close focusing on value of Pecker's testimony. This is the roadmap they asked jurors to follow."
Judge Merchan asks if the laptop the jurors were given containing exhibits into evidence has Wi-Fi access. When told that it does, he asks if the Wi-Fi can be disabled. (via Anna Bower)
NO VERDICT TODAY: Judge Merchan sends the jury home, since the court is working on compiling the testimony the jury asked for, which he says will take 30 min to read back. Tomorrow deliberations will restart at 9:30 a.m. with the readback of the transcript, plus the jury instructions.
JUSTICE MERCHAN: We received another note. He reads it. The note describes what the jury wants to hear from jury instructions. Justice Merchan says he interprets the note as the jurors wanting to hear page 7-35 of the jury instructions. (via Anna Bower, Lawfare)
Justice Merchan says the jurors also requested headphones for audio.
(This suggests the jurors want to re-listen to some or all of the audio recordings that were admitted into evidence.)
(via Anna Bower, Lawfare)
Those of you who have been following since yesterday will be relieved to know that Judge Merchan has now confirmed for the record that the jurors' laptop does NOT have Wi-Fi access
"We want to hear another recording of Stormy Daniels talking about Trump's lack of sexual prowess."
"Relevance?"
"None, really, we just like to laugh about it, and we're kinda stressed right now."
"Granted."
55 pages of instructions without a written copy!
Saw your other thread on this and one stated concern claimed (by attorneys, not you) was that those with better reading skills would have more sway. Oral only seems highly difficult for those with hearing loss or some neurodivergent traits. Brutal.
Ok, well, pages 7-39 are pretty much all the instructions. So, given the jury isn’t allowed to keep a written copy of the instructions, this doesn’t tell me much.
Why don't NY criminal juries get a written copy of their instructions? NY law doesn't forbid it, but the NY high court has found that it requires the consent of parties. In 2005, the NY court system's Jury Trial Project endorsed changing the law. ww2.nycourts.gov/sites/defaul...
In-the-know folks participating in trial coverage said that he has to be in the building, so that everyone can quickly reassemble when the jury (hopefully) reaches a verdict.
How does that happen? Or was the answer yes because all laptops have WiFi and it may have actually been off/disabled?
Maybe this is just my private sector IT perspective, but laptops can be locked down in so many ways, it’s silly to me to think they could accidentally give them one with WiFi. 😂
From my NY government IT perspective, attorneys lose their minds when there’s no wifi. There are also additional bits of security that I won’t get into for obvious reasons.
The attorney’s, sure, but isn’t this like a courthouse owned laptop that was issued? I would think those would be generally locked down with some limited way to transfer just the evidence the jury should have available to them.
IANAL. If it wasn’t obvious. 😂
I’m definitely also not a lawyer! But the court is part of the NYS unified court system, which is part of the government, so I’m semi-assuming that there are similar policies - wifi is available but there are other security hurdles in place.
Gotcha. Perhaps a VERY comprehensive block list or something. Makes sense but at the same time I just assume someone is tasked with doing these things generally and I’m surprised when I find out that, eh, maybe not. 😂
The Court of Appeals (New York's highest court) has said it's reversible error to give the jury written copies of the jury instructions because... of a weird interpretation of a statute:
Oh that's bizarre. Our juries get printed copies of the instructions. Sometimes you can see on appeal that they've checked off the elements. I don't know how you'd consider a complex case without written instructions.
i don't know the history behind it but i think it's largely so that each juror gets the rules from the judge, they have to listen, they don't have someone in the jury room reinterpreting it. a little precious imo.
