In misc.legal.moderated, on Fri, 31 May 2024 08:26:06 -0700 (PDT),
"Rick" <
[email protected]> wrote:
"micky" wrote in message news:[email protected]... >>
Here's a copy of the jury instructions from the trump trial.
When you are judges, you may want to copy these and, with a few little >>changes, use them in your courts. I'm just trying to be helpful.
They are 55 pages but many pages are very short.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24699539-people-v-djt-jury-instructions-and-charges-final-5-23-24
Can anyone explain the legal theory on why the judge insisted on reading >these instructions rather than providing a written copy?
I think I heard there is a NY court decision 20 or 30 years ago that
they jury cannot have the instructions. I think it's because they are
not evidence.
Yet the judge can read them to them as much as they want. Also they
cannot have transcripts of the testimony, because one commenter said
they might not be accurate (have not been reviewed by the attorneys?)
but would they be less accurate than what the court stenographer reads
back when asked, which I presume are read straight from the original compacted**** notes and not reviewed by the lawyers either?
****What do you call the format after the court stenographer takes notes
with a "typewriter" that has far fewer than 26 keys?. It's a form of shorthand, right, and can only be read by someone who knows that sort of stenography.
I dabbled in law school in NY and spent some time looking at annotated
statute books. When I got to Maryland, I actually had personal
reasons** to look up statutes and related cases, and the difference in
amount is maybe a factor of 5. NY has far more laws and cases than
Maryland does, not surprising since it's a so much bigger state and the
world finance center. Maryland is the national crab center, so I
presume there are a lot of statutes and cases on crabs.
Once on a warm summer night about 11PM on my way to a campground on the "eastern shore" of Maryland, to spend the night before seeing friends vacationing at the shore. My car's top was down and I pulled off the
road and stopped in Queen Anne's county to look at the stars. Soon a
cop came by and I told him I was watching the stars. Don't remember the details but I guess I naively agreed to let him search the car. Why not?
I'm not doing anything wrong. In the back seat I had a small old
suitcase with a machete inside. A friend who runs a ministorage found
it left behind and gave it to me. It's useful for cutting brush when
thorns close a path when hiking and this one was decorated a little bit,
so I brought it with me to show the friends I was meeting the next day.
I told the cop the truth, it was in the suitcase so it wouldn't damage
the upholstery. The cop arrested me for carrying a concealed weapon.
Who was it concealed from? Everyone on the eastern shore was asleep.
Even gas stations were probably unattended. And a machete? Who robs a
bank with a machete?
He kept me about 5 hours, including a trip to another building with a
courtroom and judge, and I hadn't managed to nap on the steel bed in my
cell, so I wasn't able to get any sleep before seeing my friends. Still
the visit was good, we went to Assateague Island and saw up close the
wild horses. One even let me pet him, although they warn you not to
because they may kick and bite. And I was able to drive home the end of
the day without falling asleep.
So I had to hire a lawyer who had a fixed price of $1000. I asked him to
talk to the DA in advance so I might not have to return for the trial,
but he didn't do anything until the day of the trial. He showed up with
2 pages of photocopies of the statute page and the relevant recorded
decisions, which is the point of this story***. There were only about 5
cases listed for that statute, (and none had any relevance to my case.
I'd already looked at them**.) Finally the lawyer talked to the
prosecutor before my case was called and arranged Probation Before
Judgment. I think I should have gotten a stet and I'd told him that. He
also didn't bother to tell me that after n years, I could get the PBJ
expunged. Shouldn't he have told me that? I haven't bothered to do
it, however. Is that a mistake on my part, if I get stopped for traffic reasons, for example?
***NY has more statutes and far more case law than some other states.
It's bigger, more populous, than most states and much older than the
states it's not bigger than, and it has more corporations and finance
than any other state. Or it did until recently.
**This story is set before the internet had so much on it, but even now,
you can find statutes, but I don't think you can find cases unless you subscribe to Lexus/Nexis. --- In NYC all the law schools are private,
and I don't think non-students can use their libraries. I was told even
as a student at Brooklyn Law School I'd have to get permission to use
one of the other school's. In Baltimore there are I think 2 law
schools and both are public and their libraries are public. In
addition, I happened to notice that Baltimore County had a law library
on the first floor of the county courthouse, which -- maybe I shouldn't
have been surprised but I was -- was open to the public. It didn't occur
to me when I lived in NY, or until just now, that there might have been
a public law library in, say, the Brooklyn courthouse. Maybe there was.
--
I think you can tell, but just to be sure:
I am not a lawyer.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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