A judge cannot set aside a “not guilty” verdict once pronounced but they can declare a mistrial prior to declaration if they find that they jury is not following instructions, shows indications of undue influence (tampering), or is otherwise acting out of concert with legal norms, i.e. introducing novel theories of the crime not discussed in court or performing independent research (see 12 Angry Men for examples of the latter). If twelve jurors went into the jury room and all decided, without dissension or lack of discussion with the judge to vote to acquit, the judge wouldn’t have any latitude to alter the verdict, but I think that is a pretty unlikely scenario. Even if there is a core of jurors voting for acquittal in the basis of nullification, there will almost certainly be at least a couple of hold-outs, and a judge that gets a whiff of that kind of ‘insurrection’ in the juror box is going to put a quick kibosh on that nonsense, especially in a high profile case like this.
Dammit, that’s the one I was trying to think of. I knew there was a recent-ish case where the prosecution didn’t hand over the stuff they felt (or claimed to have felt) had no value to the case and the judge had to explain that that’s not their call to make.
Which unless there’s a 12-0 vote for not guilty, does not do more than what would happen if one or more jurors were obstinate. there’s also the option of the judge disqualifying a particular juror who seems unable to fulfill their role, so being too vocal about your convictions or beliefs can also bet you thrown off the jury. The item I recall in the news was a juror who was acting “erratic”. However, never put it past a judge to ensure that there are no uppity jurors. I suppose the defense could then petition for a mistrial too, it they feel the judge was exceptionally biased in their treatment of jurors.
One big reason this can be done is if there was jury tampering by someone associated with the defense. The deliberations are considered to not have been fair and can be overturned. This happened in one of Gotti’s trials.
Back to the OP. In criminal and civil cases lawyers love a document dump. Flood the other side with a bunch of docs, almost all of which are not relevant and force the other side to spend time and money to wade thru them. Got a log of a tip to LAPD? Throw it in there. A post to social media about claiming to see the defendant having lunch with Jack Ruby, throw it in there. And on and on. It’s almost surprising for this case that it’s only 15k.
No. It had to go to appeal. Then the appeal court overthrew the jury finding.
Australia, and the jury finding was Guilty, overturned on appeal.
It was an interesting case, and almost exactly the opposite of “jury nullification”. The jury found the guy guilty in spite of the evidence, and the second appeal court overturned the verdict. By law/custom, the (Australian) appeal courts can’t overturn the jury finding of fact, but they decided that the jury decision wasn’t a finding of fact – it was an act of imagination to get the result the jury wanted.
I say it was interesting, because on the one hand, I wouldn’t hang a dog on the evidence presented, but on the other hand I didn’t think it was an unfair or unjust verdict, and within the range of normal jury decisions on the totality of evidence.
That’s a pretty dismissive summary of the prosecutions’s constitutional obligation to disclose all docs that may be relevant to the charges, and the similar obligation under civil rules of court to disclose all potentially relevant documents.
Failure to comply with those obligations could result in the criminal charge or the civil claim being dismissed.
But sure, it’s all games lawyers play. Nothing to do with their constitutional and legal obligations.
I mean, if there were some document that the prosecution was able to really easily determine wasn’t actually relevant, and they dumped it on the defense anyway just to waste their time, it wouldn’t work anyway, because it’d be just as easy for the defense to determine that it wasn’t actually relevant. And if it’s hard to tell if it’s relevant, so it’d take up a lot of the defense’s time, well, maybe it actually is relevant.
It’s not the prosecution’s job to determine what is relevant to the defence case.
Maybe the accused has told his lawyer about a guy who might be helpful to the defence, but the defence lawyer isn’t sure it would be helpful. And then they get a document in disclosure that supports that guy’s story.
Prosecution wouldn’t have any idea that document could be helpful, since they don’t know about that guy and his story.
Are either side going to be delving into that? The prosecution aren’t going to (beyond his immediate motive, texts and FB posts etc.) and are the defense really going to try and convince the jury that it was justified because United Healthcare is so evil? That seems like a pretty terrible defense strategy.
It’s not “some document”; it is thousands of documents that have to be scanned (if they are hardcopies), catalogued, reviewed, summarized, and dispositioned. Doc review is one of those tedious tasks thrown onto relatively low-paid junior associates but it is still an exhausting and expensive process, and dumping irrelevant documents onto the defense is a way of trying to overwhelm them and run up bills. It also sometimes backfires when the prosecution or plaintiff counsel isn’t careful to review what they are sending and delivers information that isn’t specifically exculpatory or covered by the specifics of the subpoena but ending up helping the defendant anyway, such as background material showing a pattern of malfeasance on the part of investigators or information establishing an alternate theory of the crime.
If it’s the best they’ve got, sure. Or they might try multiple fronts: He didn’t do it, but even if he had, it would have been justified.
Same argument applies. If it’s easy to see that that big pile of documents is irrelevant, then the defense won’t have to waste time on them, and if it’s not easy to see, then the time might not be wasted. If anything, it costs the prosecution more than the defense, because they’re the ones who have to gather, scan, etc. all of those documents in the first place.
It isn’t “easy to see that that big pile of documents is irrelevant” until they have been reviewed, and a competent defense will at least attempt to catalogue and review every document because it may only take one nugget of information to cast crucial doubt on the prosecution’s case. This takes time, hours, and money that a typical defense may be short on, so overwhelming the defense with boxes of mostly irrelevant reports, records, documentation, et cetera can be quite effective, particularly for a defendant of limited means.
I doubt it will make much difference in the case of Luigi because the particulars of his actions are so obviously evidential and in public view that even some investigatory mishandling of his case is unlikely to have key evidence or testimony dismissed but a good counsel will still go through everything to find some seed of doubt or mitigation to serve his client’s best outcome.
It’s a sign that of our legal system has been running amok for a very long time. This guy should already be serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, which is actually kind considering the fact that it was obviously premeditated murder.
I think you may be drastically underestimating the number of security cameras. This is New York City - every business and probably every residence will have multiple security cameras. Traffic cameras and ATM cameras. Assuming that the police getting private security camera footage is an actual thing and not just a TV trope, there can be video covering pretty much every step he made outside his hotel room.
Are you suggesting no trial, or a quicker trial? I don’t see a need for a trial too fast when the defendant is already in custody and is not pushing for a speedy trial. A delay of a few years might indicate a problem, but we’re only 4 months out at this point.