No. of Recommendations: 13
“ Update (1345ET): Legal minds are beside themselves at how the judge in the Trump 'hush money' case has instructed jurors to rule - first in what constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley called "the coup de grace instruction," Judge Juan Merchan said that there is no need to agree on what occurred - and can disagree on what the crime was among the charges.Two points:
First, Turley isn't the one quoted in the article you linked referring to the trial as insanity.
Second, the absence of unanimity on the object crime is a settled issue of New York law. Lots of criminal charges have as a predicate that the actions have to have been committed in connection with another crime, and apparently the law in New York
generally is that jurors do not need to be unanimous on
what the object crime is, merely that the element had been met. This is not unusual - I wasn't able to quickly find the New York state precedent, but here's a link to an analogous decision in federal court, holding that jurors do not need to agree on
which predicate crimes a defendant committed in order to reach a unanimous decision, just tat the defendant committed them:
https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/59148817add7...
