Thanks for the responses, everyone.
The Wednesday’s-off thing is just a peculiarity of this particular court or judge, I take it? No value judgment … just noting that it seems unusual.
The judge has other cases/calendars for which he is responsible. I believe he intends to use Wednesdays to keep up.
ETA: People often think that when a judge is in trial, that’s the only matter he’s taking care of. Not true. Judges are handling hundreds of cases simultaneously in various stages of progress.
I believe he presides over the mental health calendar on Wednesdays.
On Wednesday the judge will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings.
This judge ain’t no Trump.
And still have executive time.
Ah, a mental health day…
Thanks for the peek behind the curtain.
So in a long-running famous news-making trial … your OJ Simpson, George Zimmerman, and Casey Anthony-type trials where you see the same judge on the bench 5 or 6 days a week for several weeks (or a few months) at a stretch … THOSE are the unusual business-not-as-usual cases vs. like what’s happening in the current NY vs Trump case. Generally correct?
as i remember from my 1.5 week jury duty. the judge would deal with other items for about an hour in the morning, what ever time we had for lunch, and an hour or two after the jury left.
there were times we did not go to the courtroom until 10 or 10:30 if it ran long. the afternoon may end early or go late depending on where they were in the case.
there would also be breaks here and there for a short time for bodily functions and perhaps an emergency thing for the judge.
No, not really. As @rocking_chair points out, judges usually do work before trial starts and over the long lunch hour and after the jury goes home. Sometimes they dedicate a day during the week – as Merchan has – to deal with particular calendars or other matters.
In some really big cases (and probably this one) the judge’s colleagues may temporarily take over the judge’s regular calendars so the judge can concentrate on the trial at hand. But I can understand why Judge Merchan wants to keep control of his mental health calendar. Judges form attachments to their charges and like to maintain consistency for their sakes.
In the criminal courts where I worked, a typical day went like this: Arraignment calendar heard every morning from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.; jury trial from 10:00 a.m. to noon and then again from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. On Wednesdays, we heard motions and prelims for other cases.
From 8:00 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. each day, the judge was busy doing ex parte hearings and I was busy physically moving files and documents from the clerk’s office to the courtroom or vice versa, organizing exhibits and getting ready for the day. Same from 1:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
We were busy every moment.
Discussed here:
And here:
The Manhattan Mental Health Court (MMHC). This is a dedicated court part designed to provide a comprehensive system of oversight and treatment to eligible defendants with mental illness…
That’s gotta give the judge some insight on how to deal with this current defendant.
I love this quote from Trump’s defence attorney Todd Blanche:
Unbeknownst to President Trump, in all the years that Mr. Cohen worked for him, Mr. Cohen was also a criminal.
‘Also a criminal’? As in, ‘Trump was a criminal, but Cohen was a criminal too!’ (Yes, I know what he meant, but the syntax can be read that way.)
Are Trump’s lawyers really going to try to sell the story that Michael Cohen, entirely on his own and without Trump’s knowledge, paid Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougall off for affairs that never happened? And Trump wasn’t paying him back for a cover-up but even if he was, that isn’t illegal anyhow? Seems like an exceedingly fine needle to thread here for Trump to be innocent and for all of this to just be a misunderstanding.
I predict that at the end of the trial, the jury is going to deliberate for about five minutes, take a long lunch and then come back and ask if there is a degree of guilt guiltier than guilty.
Sorta like the principle that one mafioso can’t identify himself to another mafioso; a mafioso who knows both has to introduce them.
“Not only is Mr. Trump guilty, he’s innocent of not being guilty!”
FWIW, I saw a former colleague of Bragg’s interviewed on MSNBC. I believe she was on his team as a litigator. She describe Bragg as invariably level-headed, fact-driven, and unemotional. It was inconceivable to her that he would advance a shaky case—ever, never mind one as high profile as this one.
Yours is a good take and I don’t see why that can’t happen.
I think it’ll be more difficult. I think Trumps defense can be: I wanted to hush Stormy up and helped make that happen. I deal with tons of documents and sign lots of checks, and I have no idea how the nerds and lawyers recorded the “hush up” on the books.
I think this is a complete defense. I don’t have a feel for the evidence, but I do know they need Cohen (or they wouldn’t use him) to prove their case.
I’m sure I’m missing some nuances, but my understanding is that this hinges on the payment being made so that the election wouldn’t tank—i.e., effectively a campaign contribution. And that they have the receipts that this was specifically Trump’s motive (e.g., trying to stall the payment until after the election; they’d stiff her and it wouldn’t matter anymore).
That would be a good defense, save for the fact (If I have heard/read things correctly) the prosecution has evidence that Trump was part of the entire process - including structuring how Cohen was repaid, etc.