As a juror in this case, People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump, unlike being a juror in any other case Manhattan (or perhaps this country) has ever had. It involves unusual risks, unusual scrutiny, and unusual challenges.
For example, on Thursday morning, a woman who had already been selected to serve on the jury withdrew, expressing concern that she could be identified publicly and after she had already been selected to serve on the jury. . isolated for criticism By Trump-supporting media. In response, New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Marchand called for the media to be more careful when reporting information about jurors.
It’s easy to sympathize with the former juror and her concerns. And given the exceptional nature of this case, as described above, it is especially easy for me to do so, having spent several months as a juror in a high-profile case in the same courtroom. You could say that.
On Monday, I wrote about the process of being selected for that jury, which mirrored the Trump trial. But with jurors being dismissed, it’s useful to explain a little bit about how jurors expect their service to play out, at a staggering $40 a day salary. So I thought.
The trial, in which I served as a juror, centered on Brooke Astor, one of New York City’s most famous socialites and a member of one of the city’s oldest families. Her son Anthony Marshall is accused of taking advantage of her after she developed Alzheimer’s disease, including working with her lawyer Francis Morrissey to change her will to benefit Marshall. Ta.
Astor has long been the center of attention in the city’s tabloids, and the details of this case suggest it was no exception. The New York Post and Daily News regularly wrote about the trial. The New York Times dedicated a reporter to the issue. But I found out about it after the fact.
This is the first aspect of the bubble in which Trump’s jurors will live through the unknown period of the trial. They’re going to have to be careful about what they read and what they watch — more careful, in fact, than my fellow jurors and I have ever had to be. . As is known, the Astor trial was reported, but mostly by local newspapers and rarely, if ever, as the focus of national cable news coverage. The Trump trial will be very different, with endless opportunities for jurors to stumble upon media coverage.
The important thing to remember here is that news articles also contain information that was not covered in court. Even stories in which jurors are simply presented with detailed evidence can be problematic because they can reveal which evidence is understood to be most important. However, there are many things surrounding the case that jurors should and cannot be exposed to, including discussions among attorneys, broader context for witness appearances, and ultimately things that are excluded from evidence that jurors may see. And many other things are happening.
A jury’s job is quite simple. Compare the text of the law with the evidence presented in court.I encountered evidence that It wasn’t like that In the courtroom, there is a risk that perceptions of the evidence may be compromised, which could jeopardize how jurors arrive at a verdict.
For me, the strangest sign of the gap between what I know and what the rest of the world knows was my wife’s reaction when we met each other for the first time at the end of each day. We never discussed the incident, but she was as passionate about the situation as I was and wanted to know how I reacted to the testimony we heard. It seemed like he was often scrutinizing his attitude. I recognized its appearance. I was constantly watching from the defendants in the room, their lawyers, and the media. But even with a wife, there was always a wall, a bubble, separating me from what the rest of the world knew. That was what I was expected to maintain.
One of the jurors, who was an alternate if I remember correctly, was dismissed for reading the New York Post in the jury room. I guess old habits die hard, and this just didn’t sit well with trying to maintain a bubble. Even in the jury room, no one was allowed to talk about the evidence, much less read news about it, until it reached the stage of deliberation. (I admit that this ban did not prevent us from discussing witnesses in a gossipy context.)
In addition to having to keep information out of the bubble, they also had to address the concerns expressed by the Trump jurors: that people were trying to snoop. My wife knew how I was making $40 a day, and so were a few others. Close family. But otherwise we didn’t talk about it. I don’t remember how often people asked me about what I was doing. I don’t think it happens often.
Our jury probably had some advantage in that it included some retirees and (like me at the time) some self-employed people. This has allowed many of us to avoid gossiping about a co-worker who has been out of work for months (actually more than 5 months). But not all of us were so lucky. And even though we were anonymous actors, we were newsworthy. When a female foreman was attacked on the subway (an unrelated act), it made the newspapers.
Again, it’s hard to compare this to the Trump case, where there’s a lot more people watching and there’s probably a lot more interest in juror identification. It’s simply that even in high-profile cases where the national interest is not so high, jury service is a balancing act, a long effort to maintain an uncomfortable distance from the rest of the world. That’s just what I want to say. Until the day we finally got the verdict and walked out of the courtroom, all the reporters already knew our names, and when we got home that night, we found out, they knew where we lived. Ta.
As I write this, I have a framed copy of the courtroom sketch on my desk. This piece, painted by artist Jane Rosenberg, depicts an early witness being questioned by Anthony Marshall’s attorney. Marshall is pictured in profile in the lower right. Above right is New York State Supreme Court Justice A. Kirk Bartley.
You can see me, center left, sitting with the other jurors wearing the pink shirt I think I was wearing that day. However, unlike the other people in the sketch, our faces are drawn in such a way that they are indiscernible. The bubble continued.
