When a New York jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies last week, it did so based on a series of legal reasoning that involved a combination of potentially interacting statutes. That makes the case against Trump difficult to track. It also raises due process issues that Trump’s lawyers are likely to highlight on appeal.
The charges against Trump involve 11 invoices, 11 checks and 12 ledger entries that were allegedly designed to disguise hush-money reimbursements as fees for legal services. Shortly before the 2016 election, then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen paid porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stop her from talking about her 2006 affair with Trump Incidents of sexual contact. Prosecutors said that when Trump repaid Cohen in 2017, he falsified business records to hide the confidentiality agreement with Daniels.
Falsifying business records is a misdemeanor and requires “fraudulent intent.” For a crime to be considered a felony, additional proof of “an intent to commit another crime or to assist or conceal a crime” is required. The prosecutor’s main theory regarding “another crime” is New York Election Law Section 17-152. The vague and rarely used provision makes it a misdemeanor to conspire to promote the election of a candidate “by unlawful means.” But prosecutors never agreed on the “unlawful means” theory, and Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, told jurors they did not have to agree on that point.
Merchian presented three possible theories to jurors. The first theory calls for the payments Cohen made to Daniels to be considered excessive campaign contributions — a controversial interpretation of the Federal Campaign Act (FECA). According to the second theory, Trump facilitated the tax fraud by having Cohen falsely describe his reimbursements as income (which is the counterintuitive definition of tax fraud because this misrepresentation actually increased Cohen’s tax bill). According to a third theory, Trump falsified business records to cover up the falsification other Business records, which may include documents related to Daniels’ payments and 1099-MISC forms that incorrectly described his reimbursements as income.
The FECA theory is legally untenable. It hinges on the blurry distinction between personal and campaign spending and assumes that Section 17-152 applies to federal elections, in which case federal law generally preempts state law. Some versions of the tax theory and the double falsification theory are not only legally untenable, but also logically impossible, as they argue that actions taken after the election may have retroactively promoted the specifics “through illegal means.” Trump’s victory. And since unanimous consent is not required, we don’t know which theory jurors found most convincing. Merchan said even if they had three disagreements about exactly how Trump violated Section 17-152, they could still reach a guilty verdict.
That’s good, said George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf. “In many cases, the law requires a unanimous jury decision, e.g. [to] Guilty or innocent,” he wrote, “but [do] There is not necessarily agreement on every fundamental aspect or specific detail.
In an emailed version of the comment, Banzhaf compared Trump to a defendant accused of beating to death. “There could have been a perfectly valid conviction,” he said, “even though witnesses were unsure and jurors didn’t necessarily agree whether the beating was with a baseball bat, a 2X4 board or a metal pipe.”
However, murder is essentially a crime. In contrast, under Section 17-152, only conspiring to promote the election of a candidate “by unlawful means” is a misdemeanor. This is a key element of the crime, which in turn is central to the allegation that Trump falsified business records to assist or conceal “another crime.”
David B. Rivkin, a former Justice Department lawyer, said McCann “hand-selected three laws – federal election law, falsification of ‘other’ business records and ‘tax law violations’ – as violations ‘Unlawful means’ of state election laws. wall street journal. “Mr. Trump received no notice of any of these crimes, and prosecutors made only brief mention of federal election law during the trial.”
Former Federal Election Commission Chairman Bradley Smith is set to testify for the defense on the issue of characterizing Daniels’ payment as an illegal campaign contribution. But the silent review excluded that testimony, ruling that Smith could not testify as an expert witness on a legal matter.
Regardless, Trump’s lawyers are at a disadvantage because neither prosecutors nor jurors have to choose a specific “unlawful means” theory. How can they counter claims that Trump was trying to enable or cover up “another crime” when the nature of “another crime” is so vague?
“The prosecution involved (1) a misdemeanor that was elevated to a felony based on ‘intent to commit another crime,’ and (2) the prosecution and trial failed to specify or provide evidence of another crime,” Rifkin and Foley wrote. Criminal conduct. This is a Russian doll theory of crime: the crime charged depends on the intention to commit another unspecified crime, which in turn depends on the actual commission of the crime. There are more after finishing Unspecified sin.
Rifkin and Foley argued that the chaotic situation violated Trump’s due process rights. The U.S. Supreme Court declared in a 1948 case: “No principle of procedure is more clearly established than…notification of specific charges.” Cole v. Arkansas“, “The opportunity to be heard, if warranted, at the trial of the issues raised by the charge is one of the constitutional rights of every defendant in any criminal proceeding in any state or federal court. According to the court’s decision in 1970 winship case“The Due Process Clause protects a defendant from being convicted unless proven beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged.” Rifkin and Foley wrote, “The three due process clauses The rules — attention, the opportunity for a meaningful defense, and proof of all elements — were absent in Mr. Trump’s trial.”
Take 1991 as an example Shad v. Arizona The courts have clarified the requirements of these principles. Just like Benzav’s hypothetical scenario, shame Involving murder charges. The court narrowly ruled that a jury could convict a defendant of first-degree murder without agreeing on whether the killing was premeditated or the consequence of another felony.
Justice David Souter’s majority opinion drew an analogy with “the long-established rule” that “an indictment need not specify which of several overt acts constituted the means of committing a crime.” He said that in murder cases where the specific cause of death was unknown, “we have never suggested that . We see no reason … why the jury should not need to agree upon a rule as to the means of meeting the requirements criminal behavior The elements of an offense should not apply equally to alternative means of satisfying the elements of an offense intention.
However, Souter also issued a warning. “This is not to say that… the Due Process Clause places no limits on the state’s ability to define different courses of conduct or states of mind as alternative means of committing a single crime, thereby allowing a defendant to be convicted without the consent of a jury. A process or state of affairs that actually occurs,” he wrote. “The axiom of due process requires that a statute must not prohibit conduct that is so vague that people of common intelligence would make different guesses about its meaning…The practical consequence is that a statute cannot be charged under a valid statute The defendant will be at a disadvantage by knowing specifically the legal basis of the charges against him.
As Rifkin and Foley note, all nine justices shame “When the means of committing a crime are so extensive that the defendant was not given fair notice of the basis for the charges, unanimous consent is required to obtain a conviction.” The New York case against Trump certainly seems to fit that description.
