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By Sean O'Driscoll
Senior Crime and Courts Reporter
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It is "deeply disconcerting" to most federal prosecutors that the jury in former President Donald Trump's hush money trial does not get a written copy of the judge's detailed instructions, a former federal prosecutor has said.
It is not mandatory for the judge to provide jurors with written instructions and they thus must absorb what he or she tells them before they begin their deliberations. In this case, the 12-member jury requested to hear the 55-page instructions again, shortly after beginning deliberations on Wednesday.
"You can read the jury instructions but the jury does not have access to a written copy of them while deliberating," wrote Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, on X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday. "This is deeply disconcerting to most fed'l [federal] prosecutors, who are used to sending the instructions back."
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On Thursday morning, Judge Juan Merchan read the instructions to the members of the jury again. The judge's instructions on how the jury should interpret the charges are a crucial element of the complex case.
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Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee, became the first former president in U.S. history to stand trial in the criminal case.
Following an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office, Trump was indicted in March 2023 on 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to hush money paid to adult film star Stormy Daniels by the former president's lawyer, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Daniels had alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case against him is politically motivated.
Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Thursday.
Vance, who served as U.S. attorney from 2009-2017 during the Obama administration, noted that the public can read the instructions online yet the jury "does not have access to a written copy of them while deliberating."
Writing in X, formerly Twitter, on Thursday, Vance said that lawyers accustomed to the federal system find it disconcerting to see a lack of written jury instructions.
Fordham Law School professor Cheryl Bader told the outlet Salon that in her experience, jurors across jurisdictions typically lack access to written jury instructions.
"It's not possible to predict with any certainty how long a particular jury will deliberate. But this case has always struck me as one where it would be more a matter of days than of hours, and now that has proven to be the case," added Vance.
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