Harvard Law-trained CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen criticized defense attorney Todd Blanche‘s closing argument in the Donald Trump criminal trial in Manhattan, where the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and former President faces 34 felony counts for allegedly falsifying business documents to illegally impact the 2016 presidential election.
In his closing argument, when Blanche suggested that Trump could go to jail, Judge Juan Merchan reprimanded Blanche and said: “That was outrageous, Mr. Blanche. Someone who’s been a prosecutor as long as you have, someone who’s been an attorney as long as you have knows that is highly inappropriate.” Merchan added: “It’s hard for me to imagine how that was accidental.”
Eisen explained on CNN: “You’re never supposed to talk about the sentence that a defendant can get when you’re arguing to the jury because it’s not the jury’s job to mete out that sentence — it’s the judge’s job — and it can influence a jury not to look at the facts and the law but to shape their deliberations because a defendant might go to jail. It really is criminal law 101.”
Juries don’t sentence, judges do — it’s Criminal Law 101
That’s why Blanche made a BIG mistake mentioning the possibility of prison for Trump
I said more on @cnni w @vausecnn pic.twitter.com/WuYxfJGJ4V
— Norm Eisen (#TryingTrump out now!) (@NormEisen) May 29, 2024
Eisen added: “You never do that, but, I will say, I was watching Blanche closely…I think it was one of those inexplicable slips, I don’t think he was doing it on purpose. He stopped himself, it was kind of a hiccup. He moved in a jerky way after he said it. I think he realized, it was on his mind and he went too far in letting it out.”
However, as Eisen pointed out: “It doesn’t matter. The judge gave a curative instruction — the judge told the jury when they came back from lunch that they should disregard that and has no place in their deliberation.”