What Will the Jury Instructions be in the False Business Records Case?

[Man With A Plan]

You on the left are running on crap like THAT because you can't run on the results of your policies!

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

Many of you do think like fascists, Man With A Plan, and we will not have that kind of America.

 

[Lisa558]

No it did not! Bragg has refused to specify what the "crime" is that he's shoehorned the misdemeanors onto to make this a felony!

They do this repeatedly. When you ask what the crime is, they say “it’s in the indictment.” Why not just tell us what the crime is? Because there isn’t one.

 

[Plagerist]

The indictment made it very plain what the crimes were.

Did you read it?

 

[TheParser]

I know the media likes to call it "The Hush Money Case" or "The Porn Star Case," but it is about neither of those things.

It happens that we can have a pretty good idea of what the jury instructions will be, because New York provides its judges with a boilerplate set of instructions for each crime. In this case the crime is:

View attachment 939844

https://www.nycourts.gov/judges/cji/2-PenalLaw/175/175.10.pdf

The instructions are lengthy but I'll try to excerpt the most relevant parts:

View attachment 939840

View attachment 939841


I don't think the judge will want to follow that model. It sets the bar far too high for the prosecution, given the case it has presented so far.

The three biggest weaknesses of the case are:

a ) lack of evidence that Trump made the records or caused them.
b) lack of intent to defraud, since defraud in New York means that:

This conduct must involve the making of a false statement, a material omission, or the concealment of information with the intent to deceive.

The false statement or omission must be made in connection with a transaction involving property or services, and it must be made with the intent to deprive the other party of the property or services or to obtain property or services from the other party by means of false or fraudulent pretenses.

New York Penal Law § 190.60: Scheme to Defraud in the Second Degree

Free Consultation - Our New York criminal lawyers have a combined 100+ years of legal and law enforcement experience. Our team includes former prosecutors from the District Attorney’s offices in New York City and Long Island, as well as law enforcement professionals. Stephen Bilkis & Associates...

criminaldefense.1800nynylaw.com

c) The lack of "another crime," that was needed to bump this case to a felony and dodge the Statute of Limitations.

Of course the weakness that permeates the case is the credibility of the witnesses. Note that thus far, the more information a witness has had, the less credible of a person they have been. The one witness so far who could not fairly be called a professional liar is Trump's assistant who only stated that she vaguely remembers seeing Stormy Daniels at Trump Tower. The lead witness publishes a tabloid that pretty much openly profits from printing lies and the predicted "star witness," has convictions for lying under oath.

So Judge Merchan will hate reading those jury instructions. Unfortunately, he won't have to. The model instructions are only a guide:

Criminal Jury Instructions (CJI)

The Criminal Jury Instructions are a set of model charges intended as a guideline for trial judges. The instructions are, of course, based on statutory provisions and prevailing case law. The Committee does not receive adversarial briefs or arguments on unresolved legal issues related to a charge, and accordingly does not necessarily attempt to resolve such issues. Further, the facts of a particular case may call for a modification of a CJI2d model charge. Of necessity, such determinations are left to the learned and sound discretion of the trial court.

CRIMINAL JURY INSTRUCTIONS

The official home page of the New York State Unified Court System. We hear more than three million cases a year involving almost every type of endeavor. We hear family matters, personal injury claims, commercial disputes, trust and estates issues, criminal cases, and landlord-tenant cases.

www.nycourts.gov

I myself am not that confident in the learned and sound discretion of Merchan. I believe that he will create a modified version of those instructions designed to steer the jury to a guilty verdict somehow fitting the facts presented. He will almost certainly downplay the "beyond a reasonable doubt" aspect. I believe he may try to hedge on or downplay the requirement to find all elements proven.

If it leads to a conviction, which I doubt, it would certainly be overturned at the first appeal. But, Merchan will have his scalp, for which he will no doubt be handsomely rewarded through the quasi-legal bribes paid to his daughter and her campaign business.

"Guilty" -- of course.

No jury would dare acquit him, lest those jurors be hunted down by outraged liberals.

 

[Lisa558]

Did you read it?

They ALWAYS say that. It’s the same cop-out when IM2 or Superbro call me a racist. I ask what have I said that’s racist, and they can never answer. They always say….there are lots of posts. But they can never identify them.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

They ALWAYS say that. It’s the same cop-out when IM2 or Superbro call me a racist. I ask what have I said that’s racist, and they can never answer. They always say….there are lots of posts. But they can never identify them.

... because you write so many of them.

 

[Lisa558]

... because you write so many of them.

So show me one. Or are you going to play the same lib game: accuse me of something, and then fail to identify it, and then say “there are lots of examples.” Like Trump with the unidentified “underlying crime”?

I only state facts. Affirmative action is a racist policy that right was ruled unconstitutional. There IS a correlation between high OOW birthrate and poverty and crime. It is wrong for corporations to factor race into hiring decisions, and favor blacks.

None of this is racist.

 

[para bellum]

b) lack of intent to defraud, since defraud in New York means that:

This conduct must involve the making of a false statement, a material omission, or the concealment of information with the intent to deceive.

The false statement or omission must be made in connection with a transaction involving property or services, and it must be made with the intent to deprive the other party of the property or services or to obtain property or services from the other party by means of false or fraudulent pretenses.

The judge has telegraphed his plan on this- it appears that he is just going to bypass the definition of defraud. The CJI will be:

"a person acts with intent to defraud when his or her conscious objective or purpose is to do so."

The object crime will be ELN 17-152, and the jury will not have to be unanimous on the "unlawful means". Some of them might think it's FECA, some of them might think it's some tax violation, or causing AMI or Cohen to make false entries in their records. The "unlawful means" might not even be a crime- Cohen overstated his income and overpaid his taxes. Which is not a criminal act- but it's still a "false filing".

Merchan is going to make it as vague and general and subjective as he possibly can, in order to get a guilty verdict. He wants to "keep it simple" for the jury.

There is no CJI for ELN 17-152. No one has ever been convicted of that crime, it has only even been charged 3 times in 50+ years and none of them went to trial. Merchan will be writing the CJI with no existing guidance or case law to draw from.

I expect he will gloss over that one too, since he already said they didn't actually have to commit the underlying crime, only intend to.

 

[John Edgar Slow Horses]

The intent is manifested by an effort, which pecker, W, Trump, and Cohen have all be evidenced to do.

Pretty straight forward. I don't know if it vitally wounds T's campaign. Time well tell.