Dem
51
GOP
49
As everyone knows by now, a New York jury has affirmed that Donald Trump is a sexual predator. It is our view that the fault for that lies with one Donald John Trump. It is the view of Donald Trump that the fault for that lies with, pretty much, everyone else. He's spent the last 36 hours or so raging against everyone involved in the process, including plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Judge Lewis Kaplan, and the "partisan" jurors who he believes should be "ashamed of themselves."
Because the trial is over, a bunch of records related to it have already been unsealed, and at least one interesting thing has turned up. Remembering that the identities of the jurors are being protected, and so names do not appear in public documents, it turns out that "Juror No. 77" is a big fan of podcaster Tim Pool. Pool is far-right, pro-Trump, and an ally of Steve Bannon.
In view of this, Carroll lawyer Roberta Kaplan tried to get Mr. 77 booted from the jury pool. Trump "lawyer" Joe Tacopina took great exception to that, and filed a brief in which he strongly objected to that move. The key quote, among several along these lines, is: "A juror's political affiliation is not grounds for dismissal, even in cases involving a political figure." Tacopina won on that motion; very possibly the last win he recorded during this whole process.
We pass this news along for two reasons. First, everyone knows it's B.S. that Trump was targeted by some sort of raving liberal, Clinton-loving, anti-MAGA jury, but now we have firm proof. At the same time, we also know that Trump knows he's full of it, and that he's just bloviating. Again, this is something that could have been inferred with great confidence, but now it's right there in black and white.
The second reason we mention this is that when we first wrote about the jury being seated, we suggested that the plaintiff had a two-juror pincushion, by virtue of New York civil law. We then updated that to a one-juror pincushion, on learning that the jury had only nine members. Both of those statements were based on NY CPLR § 4113 (2022), which says: "Disagreement by jury. (a) Unanimous verdict not required. A verdict may be rendered by not less than five-sixths of the jurors constituting a jury." Five-sixths of 12 is 10; Five-sixths of 9 is 8. Fortunately, that is basic enough math that even the staff historian can handle it, as World Cocktail Day is on Saturday.
Anyhow, based on this, particularly the part that says "Unanimous verdict not required," we concluded a unanimous verdict was not required. But we've now seen six different stories that report that a unanimous verdict was, in fact, required. We don't know why, but in any case, clearly a unanimous verdict was reached, including the Tim Pool-loving guy that Tacopina worked so hard to keep in the jury pool. The lesson here is that there are many potential jurors who are friendly to Trumpism, but there are far, far fewer who are willing to put aside the evidence and corruptly refuse to vote for the correct verdict. (Z)