NEW YORK — Reporters covering former President Trump’s New York criminal trial were reprimanded Thursday by the judge overseeing the trial after a juror who expressed dissatisfaction with the extensive media coverage of the case was dismissed.
After the issue led several news outlets to publish articles about potential jurors, and the details were relayed in open court, Judge Juan Melchán told the media that potential jurors had no prior knowledge of their employers or physical contact. He instructed them to stop reporting on such characteristics.
Other selected jurors were quickly dismissed for apparently unrelated reasons, but they too expressed frustration to the judge about the public attention.
“We just lost someone who probably would have been a very good juror in this case, and the first thing she said was that the press, all the press, and what happened It was about feeling scared and intimidated by everything,” Marchan said. To all journalists.
“So, really, this is just a matter of common sense, and I hope you follow it,” the judge continued.
The loss of the juror meant a temporary setback, but hours later, at the end of the third day of the trial, the entire jury of 12 New Yorkers and the first alternate were seated, and the process was restored.
Machan said he expected the process to be completed on Friday after the remaining five replacements are selected.
The warning underscores the difficulty of selecting a jury in this high-profile case, where the information the public receives is largely limited to what reporters publish. Cameras are not allowed in the courtroom, except for a few minutes at the beginning of each day.
Trump’s New York trial is his first criminal trial and the first time a former US president has been tried on criminal charges. President Trump is accused of falsifying his business records in connection with a hush-money deal he struck with an adult film actress before the 2016 election. He has maintained his innocence and maintained that the records are true.
The judge had previously ordered anonymous jurors in the historic trial to protect the safety of New Yorkers, similar to President Trump’s two civil jury trials over the past year.
But unlike those trials, Marchand’s questionnaire for prospective jurors included questions about current and past employers. Among other things, these questions led New Yorkers to reveal fairly specific details about their lives in open court.
The former president has previously attacked people involved in his affairs, sometimes endangering their safety.
The first juror dismissed Thursday said she had been questioned by friends, family and colleagues about whether she was selected to serve on Trump’s jury based on media reports and expressed concerns about her ability to be impartial. .
“At this time, I do not believe that I can be fair and impartial and keep outside influences from influencing my decisions in court,” the woman said.
The judge said: “Thank you. I’m sorry you went through something like that.”
A second rejected juror was also chosen the day before, but his story was more complicated. Prosecutors told the judge they found an article about a person with the same name who was arrested in the 1990s, as well as evidence that the juror’s wife had previously been involved in a corruption investigation.
All jurors were asked whether they or someone close to them had ever been accused or convicted of a crime as part of a 42-question survey. The district attorney’s office suggested the juror may have lied on that question.
The jurors were interviewed a second time in the judge’s chair, out of earshot of reporters in the courtroom. However, these journalists noted that most of the questions appeared to come from the prosecution, and some answers drew laughs from Trump attorney Todd Blanche.
At the end of his digressions, Mr Marchand appeared to have harsh words for the jurors, and dismissed them shortly afterward. The judge did not say why, but said jurors had “expressed displeasure” about the extent of information released about them.
News outlets this week released varying degrees of detail about who serves on the committee. The Hill published some of the details Marchand took issue with, but decided to withhold certain information to keep jurors’ identities anonymous.
The judge did not target specific media outlets Thursday, but said they had generally gone too far, calling it a “problem” and effectively imposing a gag order on journalists covering the trial.
“There’s a reason this is an anonymous jury, and there’s a reason why we took this step. But there’s so much information out there that anyone can easily get it. It kind of defeats the purpose of ‘making it clear who the jurors are,”’ Marchan said.
New York state laws regarding media coverage of courts are among the strictest in the nation. The state is one of only two states that still bans cameras in courtrooms.
Therefore, information that comes out inside the courtroom where Trump’s historic trial is being held must be communicated to the public secondarily through reporters.
Mr Machan said news organizations could “write whatever is on the record” but advised reporters to apply “common sense”.
“If we can’t do that, and we can’t stick to that, then we need to look at what else we need to do to ensure the safety of jurors,” Marchan added.
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