“Oh my God, here we go,” the man said. “Coming back to Central Park, I knew some of the kids, their cousins.”
This reference has nothing to do with Trump’s controversial presidency. The man, who is black, was instead referring to a shocking rape case that occurred in New York in 1989. Shortly after five black and Latino teenagers were arrested and identified as suspects in the brutal attack on a jogger, Trump funded full-page newspaper ads calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty. The five teens were fully exonerated years later, but Trump repeatedly suggested he still believed them guilty.
The jury selection process for Trump’s secret trial has created something akin to a national focus group – albeit with a New York accent – giving ordinary Americans an opportunity to express their opinions and their thoughts on the former president’s nearly five decades in the public spotlight.
As prosecutors and the defense team sought to weed out those who were biased against Trump, one of the most polarizing figures in American political history, a familiar dynamic was suddenly reversed. Ordinary New Yorkers who have been doing it for years I listened to Trump talk about others, I was there to talk about him, and he was forced to listen – from a seat in the Defense table in Manhattan’s 15th floor courtroom.
As the prospective jurors criticized him, Trump sat with his arms crossed, looking at them. When Trump whispered against a female juror, New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan chastised him for trying to intimidate her.
Potential jurors came from diverse neighborhoods – from the West Village to Hell’s Kitchen to West Harlem – and professions – lawyers, nurses, city workers.
The most stubborn have never had the opportunity to give their opinion; about half of the approximately 200 potential jurors called into the courtroom in the first week told Merchan they could not be fair and impartial, and the judge excused them from the jury pool.
A few The New Yorkers who remained expressed strong opinions. An immigrant man from Italy compared Trump to disgraced former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – who was convicted of tax fraud in 2012 – before being excused from the jury.
“It would be a little difficult for me to maintain my impartiality and fairness,” the man said.
Others offered varying impressions of Trump’s career, while insisting that their views would not affect their ability to judge him fairly.
“I have opinions. I was born and raised in New York and I kind of spent my whole life knowing Donald Trump,” said a retired college administrator who told the court she once crossed paths with Trump and his wife, Marla Maples, while shopping for baby supplies. The woman said her cousin once lived in Trump Tower in Midtown.
Although she says she has heard positive things about Trump, she told Trump’s lawyers: “How I feel about him as president is different.” »
Some New Yorkers seemed to have nuanced opinions. Many had read “The Art of the Deal,” Trump’s bestselling (and ghostwritten) first book on how to succeed in business, a work that offered such nuggets as: “Bad publicity is sometimes better than no advertising at all. In short, controversy sells.
“I found it entertaining,” a middle-aged man who works in real estate development said of the book. The same man told prosecutors that although his company never entered into any business deals with the Trump Organization, he was “sort of an admirer of some of the work from afar.”
A longtime New Yorker who works in law enforcement said he has a fondness for Trump because “as a budding hockey player, I always thank him for fixing that Wollman rink that no one could fix it.”
He was referring to a once-dilapidated skating rink in Central Park, which Trump’s company took over from the city and renovated into a popular attraction.
A man who worked as a lawyer said he had mixed opinions about Trump’s political views. But he expressed a more definitive view of Trump’s reality TV career.
“I was a big fan of ‘The Apprentice’ when I was in middle school,” the man said, referring to the series that debuted two decades ago in which businessmen competed to impress Trump, who played a version of himself as ruthless. mogul for 14 seasons.
Trump’s celebrity raises the stakes in jury selection for both the prosecution and the defense, jury consultants said. In cases involving well-known defendants, even jurors who claim to be able to be impartial sometimes have strongly held opinions that can be difficult to overcome.
Nearly everyone in America knows Trump’s name, and his defense attorneys worry that many potential jurors in heavily Democratic Manhattan won’t be willing to fully express their opinion of him in open court, a person familiar with the strategy legal statement of the former president who spoke on the condition of ” declared anonymity to the Washington Post.
Trump’s reputation as a larger-than-life New York personality was largely forged by his regular appearances in tabloid gossip columns, the Rev. Al Sharpton, a fellow New Yorker, said in an interview. Trump’s business and romantic exploits have been closely chronicled, often through advice given to journalists by Trump himself.
“A lot of this was done by the tabloids. He became a tabloid figure,” said Sharpton, who sparred with Trump on civic issues. “A guy once told me in a tabloid that if you have (former New York Mayor) Ed Koch or Donald Trump or even me, someone controversial, that’s what sells the papers. “
Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, who advised OJ Simpson’s defense team during his 1995 murder trial, said a majority of potential jurors in the case had positive opinions of the former football star, died this month. Simpson was ultimately acquitted in this highly publicized trial.
Some viewed Simpson negatively because he had been repeatedly accused of domestic violence, she said, but “by far the most expressed opinion was, ‘I used to watch him play football games in the USC and I thought he was a funny actor.’ He has done so well for the football community.
In Trump’s case, Dimitrius said, those who sit in judgment will bring “a compendium of all the knowledge New Yorkers have about him.” She stressed that the prosecution and defense should compare potential jurors’ responses in court with any prior statements they’ve made about Trump on social media “to check, ‘Is this person being honest?’ Are they hiding something?’
Trump’s defense team worked with a jury consultant to review the social media backgrounds of potential jurors who responded to the question-and-answer portion of the selection process. Trump’s lawyers also paid close attention to potential jurors. body language when they talked about the former president, the person familiar with the defense team’s strategy said.
On Thursday, a woman said she doesn’t have “strong opinions” about Trump and can be fair. But she later admitted, after fierce questioning, that her opinions were in fact spoken.
“He seems very selfish and self-serving,” the woman said during questioning by Trump’s lawyers. “I don’t really appreciate that from a public servant.”
Trump’s lead lawyer, Todd Blanche, cited online posts, some dating back more than five years, to challenge potential jurors’ ability to be impartial.
In some cases, Blanche was successful, persuading Merchan to punch a man over a 2017 Facebook post in which he wrote: “Good news!! Trump lost his court battle over his illegal travel ban!!! Get him out and lock him up.
Another potential juror had posted an artificial intelligence-generated deepfake video in which Trump appears to repeatedly call himself “dumb as fuck.” The man insisted he could be right, saying it was “just something I reposted.” What I think of the accused outside of this room has nothing to do with the merits of the case.
Another juror was shown old social media posts she had written, one of which called Trump “racist, sexist and narcissistic.”
“Oops, that looks bad,” she conceded after seeing the post, before promising to be fair. She was fired in what Merchan deemed a “close call.”
At other times, however, the judge rejected defense arguments that anti-Trump messages from prospective jurors’ family members should reflect them. Merchan said other posts constituted political satire that did not suggest bias.
Merchan denied a defense team’s challenge to a woman who posted videos of New Yorkers celebrating Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden. The woman told the court she was documenting “a moment of celebration in New York.”
Other potential jurors approved of Trump’s bombastic rhetorical style. Although Trump attacked Merchan and District Attorney Alvin Bragg, leading the judge to issue a partial silence order, some jury members said they appreciated Trump’s lack of filter.
A black woman who said she avoids political conversations told the court: “President Trump speaks his mind and I would rather (have) that than someone who is in power and you don’t know what he thinks. »
A grandfather who came to New York from Puerto Rico seemed intrigued by Trump, calling him “fascinating and mysterious.” Trump “walks into a room and he scares people away, one way or another,” the man said. “I find it really interesting.”
Blanche seemed unsure how to interpret his opinions. “Very good, thank you,” he said.
The grandfather was later selected as one of 12 jurors for the trial.
washingtonpost
