Jury nullification is indeed another important part of our system of justice. Ignored by CC™.

That is, all those marijuana convictions for simple possession in the last 4 decades could have been mostly mooted by the jury, had they this understanding and at least one of them been willing to stand up to the rest of the jury and say, “No, this application is unjust or unconstitutional” and make it stick.

The end result is only applicable to the given case (e.g., no precedent is set), and a hung jury instance can be re-tried with a different jury, but when it happens often enough, then the DAs will learn not to waste their time trying to enforce said law.

This — Jury Nullification — has been historically relevant to both Fugitive Slave Laws and to Prohibition. Many cases failed because the jury just refused to convict.

It should have been applied to a lot of non-violent drug possession offenses as the social tide has shifted pro-marijuana in the past decades.

I’d also note — this is at least part of what got OJ off — either through racial bias or via the questionable police tactics, the jury refused to convict regardless of the evidence.

The concept of Jury Nullification has a very long history in English Common Law, with the most notable early case a case that helped William Penn (as in Pennsylvania) become famous. (That is an interesting case to read about, BTW).

On the other hand, attorneys AND their clients are NOT allowed to discuss the notion in the courtroom, and, while the SCotUS has never rejected the idea, they’ve done their best to make sure that the jury is totally unaware of their rights and responsibilities as jurors.

For more info, I recommend http://www.fija.org (The Fully Informed Jury Association).

A thought had occurred to me, the Chinese don’t have to invade, their viziers are doing a bang up job destroying the great cities, New York, Philadelphia on the east coast, Atlanta in the South, Los Angeles and San Francisco on the East Coast, add Seattle to the mix, Chicago and Detroit in the MidWest,

Imagine it is Mississippi in 1920 and a black man is accused of sexually
assaulting a white woman; he allegedly directed some inappropriate remarks to her.
The judge, jury and prosecutor are all members of the KKK.
And the facts show the defendant was out of the state at the time.
Will the defendant be found innocent or guilty?

I think we all know that the black guy will be found guilty.

The black guy is Trump. The KKK judge, jury and prosecutors are all Manhattan and/or NYC residents.
This is your typical Stalinist show trial.

The jury has to make findings of fact about the elements of the crime. The elements of the crime that Trump is charged with in Manhattan include (i) making a false entry in his books; and (ii) that the false entry was made with the intent of committing another crime. Bragg needs (ii) because, without it, the false business entry crime is a time-barred misdemeanor.

Short answer – I think that the jury is going to have to make a finding of fact about Trump’s intent to commit another crime. Bragg has fudged the identity of the other crime. A lot is going to depend on how Bragg presents his case, but I don’t see how a pair of big law corporate attorneys can fail to see this gaping hole in his case as he asks them to making a finding of fact about it.

(There are other elements too. I believe that the jury will also have make a finding of fact about Trump’s state of mind while making the false entries, i.e., he knew that they were false, he intended the entries to be false, or something like that. FWIW, I actually think that Trump has a decent defense on this point too (or would if the case was being tried to an unbiased jury). Trump hired a lawyer (Cohen) to negotiate a contract for him. Bragg should have to prove that Trump was aware of the distinction between money paid to Cohen for legal services for negotiating and drafting the contract versus expenses under the contract itself and intentionally conflated the two on his books. That screams reasonable doubt to me, but I doubt it will to a Manhattan jury.

Any defendant other than Trump would probably get out of the case by testifying that they hired their attorney to address a legal issue, I.e., negotiating a contract, paid the attorney for their services and that any improper booking of the legal versus non-legal portion expenses was inadvertent.)

Being The Great Orange Whale is not a crime in itself.
It is not constitutional to write a law specifically for a man.

But that does give some hope, and trepidation. Corporate attorneys are very used to dealing with complex legal issues. Bragg’s case is based on a hand-wave about the intent to commit another crime, which he needs in order to avoid the statute of limitations for a misdemeanor. Corporate attorneys may not be in a courtroom regularly, but most of them deal with these kinds of attempted hand-waves regularly and can spot them a mile away.

There is a very good chance that the corporate attorneys on the jury are going to be able to spot Bragg’s fudges. (What is the other crime? What are the elements of that crime? Why are we being asked to apply federal elections law in the context of a NY case?) Bragg didn’t even identify the other crime in the indictment.

So the question is what will they do after spotting the issues? They might well be anti-Trump drones, a la Larry Tribe, and will concoct whatever theory or justification they need to vote for a conviction. It is very likely that their firms are as woke as the day is long. They might have very legitimate fears about their professional future if they vote to acquit. In the worst case, they will use their legal knowledge to help structure the verdict in a way that makes Trump’s appeal as difficult as possible.

But I think it is also possible that at least one of them will refuse to go along with making a farce of their profession. Maybe they steer the jury towards a conviction on the misdemeanor charges, which would be summarily dismissed as time-barred? We can hope.

I really don’t think that everyone realizes just how exhausting committing genocide can be.

Taking time off to enable those you will soon eliminate from the face of the earth (along with their entire families) so that they can spend some quality time at the beach is therefore perfectly understandable.

OTOH, should one wonder whether the South Africans will, without missing a beat, change direction and accuse Israel of trying to eradicate the Gazans via skin cancer—IOW, by causing them ALL to contract mass melanomas?
Or that the CEASE-FIRE-NOWWWW protesters will quickly shift to NO-NO-NO-TO-MELANOMA!!?