Does Trump have the right to waive a jury trial and request a bench trial in the classified documents case? In the Federal criminal case against Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, does former president Trump have the ability to waive a jury trial and request a bench trial? Given Aileen Cannon's history in cases involving the defendant, and potential bias towards the person who appointed her would this be a good legal strategy on his part?
While the right to a jury trial is waiveable, in order to have a bench trial in a federal district court, the court and prosecutor generally must agree. before any waiver can become effective, the consent of government counsel and the sanction of the court must be had (Patton v. United States, 281 U.S. 276, 312 (1930)) This is codified in Rule 23(a) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. However, just because the waiver can be (and generally is) conditioned on governmental consent, some courts have nonetheless allowed the defendant's request for a bench trial despite the lack of consent from the government. See e.g. United States v. Panteleakis, 422 F. Supp. 247 (D.R.I. 1976) (a trial against multiple defendants that would require considering &quot;approximately 1,000 exhibits,&quot; &quot;over a three month period,&quot; with some evidence admissible against some defendants while inadmissible against others; and the government did not try to &quot;rebut the inference that substantial prejudice [in a trial by jury] is practically impossible to avoid under these circumstances&quot;). This possibility appears to have been left open by the Supreme Court in Singer v. United States, 380 U.S. 24 (1964): We need not determine in this case whether there might be some circumstances where a defendant's reasons for wanting to be tried by a judge alone are so compelling that the Government's insistence on trial by jury would result in the denial to a defendant of an impartial trial.
If the question asks, "did you do X" where X is or includes a crime that you could be criminally prosecuted for, you can invoke the 5th amendment in refusing to answer that. I have seen that done and seen that objection to the question sustained in court. However, if admitting to X would provide only civil liability, then the 5th would not apply. At trial, you may also have to take care not to give direct testimony on things that are so closely related that you "open the door" to being required to answer that question. For example, you can't say "I don't owe because I did X" and then expect to not have to answer "So just to be clear, did you do X?" Also, depending on context, invoking the 5th might cause a jury to view your testimony more skeptically (cpast points out that "For civil cases, adverse inferences based on pleading the fifth are totally okay"), and if that's going to come up you should ask your attorney about whether or not it'd be a good idea strategically.
Actually this is the only SCOTUS ruling on Impeachment because of what it legally means with respect to SCOTUS and impeachment. Namely, Impeachment is a congressional power and not a judicial one that has no punishment beyond the removal from office upon conviction and that therefor it is not a matter that is Judicial. That is a fancy way to say that SCOTUS or any lower court may not hear appeals rising from the outcome of Impeachment. Because of this, it's unlikely to hear any SCOTUS case as to the matter of impeachment and the only outstanding question they could likely hear is "Who can hear an Impeachment Trial for the Vice President?" but thus far none of the 19 impeachment trials have heard involved a vice president. Nixon v. United States basically held that in matters of impeachment it is the court's position that it is likely to respond to this hypothetical with the legal ruling of "not my monkeys, not my circus" (note: not legal jargon). With that said, this makes the U.S. senate the highest court in the land when it comes to precedents set by impeachment cases. The very first person ever impeached was a U.S. Senator, who was expelled by the Senate the same day the House voted on Articles of Impeachment. The decision not to have the trial did establish some notable precedents: first, Impeachment and conviction are all about removing an officer from office and if at anytime before conviction the officer is removed by other means, the process is stopped as it is moot. Second, and more important, is that members of Congress are not "impeachable" officers as both houses have methods that allow them to expel members by vote. This means that the only people who can be impeached are executive officers (the person who is currently president, vice president, and cabinet secretaries, any other office that is appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate, and federal judges) and that a conviction of impeachment does not bar one from holding another federal office unless the senate enacts an additional punishment after the conviction barring that person from federal office. They cannot bar one from state office. Finally, House and Senate Rules have instructions for procedures in their part in impeachment. The commonality between both is that impeachment takes precidents over all regular buisness so once articles are put to the floor, there speaker must hold the vote with in a certain window of time (three days, I think) and the Senate must hold the trial as soon as possible, though will honor reasonable delays as per the impeached officer's right to delay. As a final note, and because it wasn't clear in the question Nixon v. United States is often confused with another case (United States v. Nixon). The latter one did indirectly relate to impeachment in that it was related to President Nixon handing over evidence to the comittee investigating possible impeachment articles against Nixon, and because of that ruling, Nixon handed over the evidence and later resigned to avoid the Impeachment. The former one not only didn't involve anything related Watergate, it also wasn't related to President Nixon at all, but a (former) Federal Judge Walter Nixon, and specifically was heard because Judge Nixon happened to be the first Judge impeached by a Senate commitee as the jury rather than the full Senate, following a rule change that only held full senate as jury for the President and Vice President and a committee for anyone else. The final rule is that only the President is constitutionally mandated to have the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court act as the judge in an Impeachment trial, while the presiding officer for all other cases is either the Vice President (acting in his role as President of the Senate) or the President pro Tempore of the Senate (acting in his role of "Guy Keeping the Vice President's Seat in the Senate Rotunda Warm" (not technical Jargon)). Which is why the question of "who is the judge in impeachment of the Vice President?" a noodle baking question, and the answer differs from the Chief Justice to the Senate pr Tempore to the rarely serious argument of the Vice President himself. The best answer is that "It has never come up."
To start, for this hypothetical to happen, a whole bunch of decisions contrary to sanity have to happen: The Vice President and President Pro Tempore do not invoke the 25th Amendment to temporarily remove the President from office Congress does not issue Articles of Impeachment The President does not pardon himself The District Attorney decides to prosecute the sitting President rather than waiting for his term to be over There are probably more I'm missing. With that out of the way, in theory there's no law that says a President cannot serve while in prison, and simply being a felon does not disqualify him from the Presidency. The judge might order that while he was still serving as President, he serve his time under house arrest - he'd constantly be surrounded by police officers, so it would be pretty difficult for him to run, and it would keep him as as able as possible to keep performing the official functions of the office. The judge could also just defer his sentence. Putting him in regular prison would have serious national security implications, both in terms of protecting his person and in allowing him to effectively serve as Commander-in-Chief, so the government could probably make a compelling case against putting a sitting President in prison. According to this Senate Report, the President will also continue to receive Secret Service protection once he leaves office, so long as he is not removed by Impeachment. There doesn't seem to be a provision against that protection if the President is in prison, so the Secret Service would be obliged to find a way to protect him while he is in prison. Most likely this would mean he would be put in an isolated prison wing, possibly with Secret Service protecting his section.
In general they are not told. In fact, I am not aware of any jurisdiction where they are told by the judge officially. In fact judges will normally charge a jury that they must accept the law as stated by the judge, and ignore any other source of the law, whether they like it or not. But the Judge has no way to enforce such a charge. According to the Wikipedia article The 1895 decision in Sparf v. United States, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan held that a trial judge has no responsibility to inform the jury of the right to nullify laws. It was a 5–4 decision. This decision, often cited, has led to a common practice by United States judges to penalize anyone who attempts to present legal argument to jurors and to declare a mistrial if such argument has been presented to them. In some states, jurors are likely to be struck from the panel during voir dire if they will not agree to accept as correct the rulings and instructions of the law as provided by the judge. A 1969 Fourth Circuit decision, U.S. v. Moylan, affirmed the power of jury nullification, but also upheld the power of the court to refuse to permit an instruction to the jury to this effect. We recognize, as appellants urge, the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge, and contrary to the evidence. This is a power that must exist as long as we adhere to the general verdict in criminal cases, for the courts cannot search the minds of the jurors to find the basis upon which they judge. If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused, is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision. Nevertheless, in upholding the refusal to permit the jury to be so instructed, the Court held that: …by clearly stating to the jury that they may disregard the law, telling them that they may decide according to their prejudices or consciences (for there is no check to ensure that the judgment is based upon conscience rather than prejudice), we would indeed be negating the rule of law in favor of the rule of lawlessness. This should not be allowed. It is not so much that jury nullification is a right of the jury, as that there is very little right for the prosecutor or judge to inquire into why the jury acted however it did. If there is a suspicion that the jury was bribed, or influenced by prohibited communications, that can be looked into. But otherwise a jury is like an oracle, its actions have no specified reason or justification, they are whatever they are. The judge (or an appeals court) can set aside a jury verdict on the grounds that no rational jury could find in a particular way -- this is mostly used to overturn convictions based on insufficient evidence. But a jury has almost total freedom to believe of disbelieve any witnesses, so if it disbelieves, it could acquit, regardless of whether it rejects the law under which charges are brought. So there is no way to tell if a particular verdict was based on nullification, or on disbelief of the witnesses, or some other possible ground. In any case, there is no provision -- that I k now of -- to set aside a jury verdict on the grounds that it was an instance of nullification, so inquiring into whether it was would be of little point. This attitude toward jury verdicts goes back to the very early origins of trial by jury, when it was a replacement for Trial by Ordeal. The Ordeal had been considered a way of asking God to decide the issue, and there was no way to ask God to clarify the decision. When it was replaced by jury trial, no way to ask for clarification was considered possible there either -- the jury was said to voice the decision of the community at large: the formal term for jury trial was &quot;to be tried by the country&quot;. See C. Rembar's The Law of the Land and H.C. Lea's The Duel and the oath for more on this history. This article reports on recent cases where juries have refused to convict in Marijuana cases.
Your ability to assert your Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is not limited to cases where you are on trial or have been accused of a crime. Your ability to assert that right is also not an absolute bar against being ordered to testify: if you are given immunity, you can be forced to testify. Alice cannot hold Bob in contempt – only the judge can. Bob can explain to the judge why a simple truthful "yes" or "no" answer is not possible, if he knows how to do that (does he understand the notion of a false presupposition, or unclarity?). He could for example assert truthfully that he does not understand the question (pointing to the distinction between "Charlie's body falling on the vase, causing it to fall and break", and "Charlie acting with apparent intent to break the vase", since it's not patently obvious that the former scenario constitutes "breaking the vase"). However (changing the scenario a bit), he has to understand that if the question is "Did Charlie shoot Delilah?" and the fact is that Ethan forced Charlie to shoot Delilah, saying "No" based on a theory of blame is not reasonably interpreted as truthful testimony. Taking the 5th, without setting forth your basis (not understanding the question) runs the risk that the prosecution will grant immunity from prosecution, and therefore you don't get to avoid answering the question. Immunity covers various things except that it does not cover prosecution for perjurious testimony. See US v. Apfelbaum, 445 U.S. 115: the Fifth Amendment does not prevent the use of respondent's immunized testimony at his trial for false swearing because, at the time he was granted immunity, the privilege would not have protected him against false testimony that he later might decide to give. Immunity is conferred under the control of some applicable statutory law, such as 18 USC 6002 which says that no testimony or other information compelled under the order (or any information directly or indirectly derived from such testimony or other information) may be used against the witness in any criminal case, except a prosecution for perjury, giving a false statement, or otherwise failing to comply with the order.
E. Jean Carroll first sued Donald Trump in 2019 for defamation in connection with his statements in 2019 denying a prior assault upon her in the 1990s in response to her 2019 memoire asserted that he had done so in the 1990s. The statute of limitations in that case ran from the time that Trump made the statement. The first lawsuit is still pending because of issues over whether Presidential immunity from lawsuits applies to it: The Justice Department has argued Trump was acting as the president while responding to Carroll’s allegations and said the United States, rather than Trump himself, should be the defendant. If the courts agree, it would probably torpedo Carroll’s claim because the government cannot be sued for defamation. The issue remains unresolved. The D.C. Court of Appeals heard arguments on the case but essentially punted on the issue this month, sending it to another court. The criminal statute of limitations on this underlying conduct in the 1990s expired long before the lawsuit was filed. She did not press criminal charges at the time. Last year [i.e in 2022], Carroll filed a second lawsuit, this one accusing Trump of battery and defaming her again after he left office. That lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, is the one scheduled to go to trial on Tuesday [i.e. last week]. The suit was filed in November 2022 as a New York law known as the Adult Survivors Act took effect. That law allowed sexual assault victims to sue years later, which proponents said was necessary because it can take considerable time for survivors to feel ready to speak out. All of the factual statements in this answer, including all quotes material, are from an April 24, 2023 article in the Washington Post. As a practical matter, a final resolution of the second lawsuit will resolve essentially all issues in the first lawsuit except Presidential immunity (and arguably a slight amount of damages), under the doctrine of collateral estoppel (a.k.a. issue preclusion). A defense verdict from the jury in the pending case would render the Presidential immunity issue in the first case moot. Sources including this one have concluded that the Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is likely to withstand a constitutional challenge. This is because a similar law passed on 2019, the Child Victims Act (CVA), was upheld as constitutional. The ruling in the CVA cases, in turn, relied heavily on a 9-11 related statute of limitations revival act which was upheld by New York State's highest court in 2017: Shortly after the passage of the CVA, lawsuits were filed with the state and federal courts of New York arguing that the CVA was unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause. Decisions have been rendered in state and federal courts holding that the CVA was constitutional. Both courts relied on the legal standard enumerated by the In re World Trade Ctr. Lower Manhattan Disaster Site Litig., 30 N.Y.3d 377, 400 (2017). which established that for a revival statute to be deemed constitutional under the Due Process Clause, there must exist an identifiable injustice that moved the Legislature to act,&quot; and second, &quot;in each case, the Legislature's revival of the plaintiff's claims for a limited period of time was reasonable in light of that injustice.&quot;
The trial at issue is a civil trial over the publication of his book Permanent Record and the non-disclosure agreement that he signed connected to his employment, see the DoJ announcement, which also notes that this is separate from a future espionage trial. The remedy sought involves no imprisonment. In the US, the constitutional right to a jury trial applies to criminal cases. See the Arpaio case, where cases involving imprisonment of less than 6 months are not subject to the jury trial requirement. The right to a jury trial in civil cases is much more complicated and fact-specific, see this answer. Not yet in evidence is the question of whether his employment agreement included a waiver of jury trial w.r.t. non-disclosure, but one should assume that the government anticipated the scenario that a person would breach the NDA. ......