The consensus among legal scholars on MSNBC last night was that Smith is going to make a motion to try to force Loose Cannon to make a definitive ruling on the bogus PRA defense. If that fails, it’s off to the 11th circuit.
AS painful as it may be, as bitter a pill it is to swallow, we should always remember that DJT is still an American citizen and as such is entitled to the most vigorous defense available in court. OUR legal system is designed to err on the side of innocence. Blackstone's rule "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" Hopefully it will always remain so. So if he gets off, he was just one of the ten guilty who escaped justice, Just VOTE! Make sure this guilty SOB never enters the WH again, not even on a guided tour.
"AS painful as it may be, as bitter a pill it is to swallow, we should always remember that DJT is still an American citizen and as such is entitled to the most vigorous defense available in court."
Not a lawyer. I read somewhere that her statement said something about "don't try to jump to jury instructions before the trial starts you dummy!!!!!" when isn't that exactly what she was trying to do?
In criminal law, we use jury instructions to define the scope of issues. That's what she was doing. She was offering the parties the opportunity to draft their version of instructions that would show what they believe the scope of the PRA issue is. This is not unusual at all, and is especially common when, as here, no pattern instructions exist. There was never any indication at all that she intended to adopt either version as the final instruction.
The Government asked to have their instructions adopted as final, and she rightly told them that now is not the time.
On the contrary, she was offering two completely erroneous assumptions about what the scope of the PRA issue is (spoiler: there is in fact no PRA issue at all; it has no relevance whatsover) and demanding that they assume one of them was correct.
She demanded nothing. She properly denied the motion to dismiss, and declined the Government's demand that she adopt any proposed instruction touching on an affirmative defense as final.
Since you are so certain I'm wrong, Id love to hear your thoughts on what her nefarious plan is. I'd also be interested to know in what jurisdiction judges proscribe potential affirmative defenses in criminal cases sua sponte.
Your first paragraph ignores her original demand for the prosecution to choose between responding to two slightly different but equally bogus interpretations of the law and craft jury instructions reflecting the wrong law, instead only talking about the latest ruling.
Her nefarious plan is to issue utterly bogus jury instructions which direct a verdict for Trump.
I would be interested to know in what jurisdiction prosecutors are required to draft jury instructions on the assumption that affirmative defenses are correct. In particular this is absurd here when the defendant's claim to an affirmative defense is based on absolutely nothing in any law, but solely on web posts by a non-lawyer.
You do a fine job of repeating what you see in the Government's brief, but the Government does not decide the law of the case. The court does. The proper procedural tool for preventing the Defense from raising an affirmative defense that lacks legal merit is a motion in limine. US Attorneys file them all the time in criminal cases for exactly that reason. Presumably, once a trial date is set, the prosecutors in this case will do the same.
Your idea that Cannon plans some super-secret rule 29 coup presumes both that an entire team of US Attorneys is unfamiliar with the common procedure for snuffing out a legally insufficient affirmative defense and that Cannon doesn't expect them to find out it exists between now and when it rests. Moreover, it's odd that -- if her plan is to "issue utterly bogus jury instructions which direct a verdict for Trump" -- she didn't wait until the close of evidence to offer her instructions, as allowed by rule?
As far as your final question, the answer is every jurisdiction. Both parties regularly have to submit jury instructions based on what they believe to be the judge's incorrect interpretations of the law. It's rather the point. If everyone always agreed with the judge's statement of the law, Rule 30, and its State analogues, would be unnecessary. It's probably worth noting that parties aren't always afforded as much lead time as Cannon provided here. I recently had to submit a proposed instruction in a matter I thought wrongly decided, but I only received notice 4 days before trial (though that is one more day than the rule requires.)
So I may have been jumping to conclusions in assuming she seemed biased towards team Trump when she was just following standard procedures? if so I stand corrected. Thanks again for the clarification.
According to the tee vee lawyers I listen to, Jack Smith - having been around the block a few times and not having just fallen off a banana tree - saw Cannon's bizarre order for final instruction briefs on the question of Presidential Records Act relevancy to be nothing but a bald faced scheme to throw out the case once jeopardy had attached BECAUSE SUCH A RULING WOULD BE UNAPPEALABLE AT THAT POINT IN TIME AND NUMBNUTS McBIGMACS WOULD WALK FREE AND NOTHING SAID JACK SMITH COULD DO ABOUT IT. Here's another inside baseball thing about Cannon: Fuck you and see if Jack Smith is concerned about your feelings, you unqualified hack.
She is very qualified and in excellent position for one thing. Offering aid and assistance to TFG. Knowing that Cannon can throw up road blocks and delay the process, exactly what Trump wants, must be very frustrating for "said Jack Smith"
One more time --- she's MARRIED to a Fed Soccer who used to work for a member of the mafia.
The connection between said mafia and Leonard Leo is Opus Dei.
Jane Mayer's "Dark Money" needs to be required reading, but I've been saying that since she wrote it (which was well in time for the 2016 fauxlection and obviously not enough people heard me).
She was recommended by Marco Rubio with a second from Rick Scott then appointed by Trump Suggesting that she may not be unbiased would not be a stretch
CNN legal analyst Ryan Goodman commented this morning that by not ruling on the relevance of PRA pre-trial it leaves the door open for Cannon to decide mid trial and issue a judgement for acquittal on that basis. rule 29, which would further impede Smith. I'm not an attorney, and not exactly sure how that would work. Any lawyers here care to comment on this?
When judges, clerks, and lawyers in criminal cases are confronted by an issue they aren't familiar with, they immediately turn to the jury instructions to inform their legal analysis. Here, you have a judge presented with a motion to dismiss that states a potential affirmative defense. This is an unusual charge, and an even more novel defense, so there are no pre-existing jury instructions. The judge requested the parties provide proposed instructions to frame the issue. Nothing about that is unusual.
She ruled on the motion. The Government demanded that she go even further and reject the affirmative defense as well by adopting its proposed instructions. She has no obligation to agree with the Government, and courts are loathe to proscribe a defense without full briefing and hearing. Moreover, she has no obligation to decide the issue at this point. Adopting a final jury instruction related to an affirmative defense before a trial is unheard of. That's what the Government was asking her to do: they wanted her to foreclose an affirmative defense by adopting a jury instruction prior to even taking any testimony. No judge is going to do that.
The Government has an avenue to deal with this. The Government can file a motion in limine prohibiting the Defense from raising recourse to the PRA as a defense. That's the proper way to foreclose an affirmative defense. The Government was trying to short-circuit the process. The judge doesn't have to let them do it.
"The judge requested the parties provide proposed instructions " on the assumption that the rectally-extracted argument was valid, with no alternative based on the assumption that the law states what it actually states quite clearly.
C.mon now. Blocking people just for sharing facts or opinions we don't agree with is really Breitbarty, and why I've been permanently barred from Breitbart and a few other "conservative' sites
I don't like our legal process. My mind rebels. The gap between "Lawful and Unlawful," and "Right and Wrong" is too wide for me to cope. I have the mental aptitude. I got a lot of encouragement to go to law school, which I could have done; and take up the Law. I just couldn't get past that moral hurdle. It caused me a lot of moral pain when I had jury duty a couple months ago, in fact.
My youngest brother is just enough dissimilar to me that he is a lawyer, and by all accounts a damn good one.
Every time I even cross the shadow of Law, I call him for advice, and I follow it to the letter.
When people want informed input on staging a live event, they call me, and that's smart. When I need informed input on the Law, I call my little brother, or another lawyer. I've found that to be smart, also.
Completely understand. There are three concepts or standards for behavior. legal, moral, and ethical. Of the three "legal" is the lowest hurdle to overcome. However, if you follow the other two, in all likelihood, everything you do will be "legal"
So are we pretty sure Cannon is not doing her own homework here? The outrage is obviously hers, but the actual thinkerin? Seems too 3 dimensional chess for someone so manifestly unqualified.
Seems more like she is trying to stack the deck for the former guy. Pushing right up against the line of doing something illegal. She is definitely part of the MAGAverse
I don't think anything "Uncle Traveling Matt" said takes that off the table, necessarily. But it does clear up the procedural angles to the immediate situation.
Can't do Katyal, Gorsuch's buddy. He also argued in front of the Supreme Court, on behalf of Nestle and Cargill, that all corporations should be exempt from the Alien Torts Act. The issue was child slavery. Katyal argued that an obligation to do anything about slave child labor providing their materials would put US corporations at a competitive disadvantage.
That may be a true statement he made. But I choose to not like him very much.
There has been some things written lately saying cannon is a previous appellate judge. That is why she over thinks these cases, looking at different sides of the case. I don’t think that is it. She is so out of her depth, she is floundering, trying to sound professional while desperately trying to let trump off. She is a disgrace.
Cannon was an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida. She was recommended for her current position by Marco Rubio seconded by Rick Scott and subsequently appointed by Trump. She is a Republican and strong DeSantis supporter Need I say more?
I don’t think she was an appellate judge but worked in the appellate division of whatever office (us attorney or AG?). But I agree she seems out of depth.
2 page nothing~berder
The consensus among legal scholars on MSNBC last night was that Smith is going to make a motion to try to force Loose Cannon to make a definitive ruling on the bogus PRA defense. If that fails, it’s off to the 11th circuit.
Smith has been 5 steps ahead of her and Trump's team so far, so I'm pretty sure he's already got a plan in place.
It’s only “dumb” if you assume she isn’t already in the tank for Dump. Once you acknowledge she’s bent, it becomes fiendishly clever.
She’s both dumb and in the tank for Trump.
I'd trust Lionel Hutz more at this point.
I’d trust Michael Avenatti more at this point.
To paraphrase Charlie Kelly: “I am well - versed in the law and other lawyerings”
AS painful as it may be, as bitter a pill it is to swallow, we should always remember that DJT is still an American citizen and as such is entitled to the most vigorous defense available in court. OUR legal system is designed to err on the side of innocence. Blackstone's rule "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" Hopefully it will always remain so. So if he gets off, he was just one of the ten guilty who escaped justice, Just VOTE! Make sure this guilty SOB never enters the WH again, not even on a guided tour.
A vigorous defense doesn’t mean the judge should just ignore or rewrite the law for the defendant’s benefit.
"AS painful as it may be, as bitter a pill it is to swallow, we should always remember that DJT is still an American citizen and as such is entitled to the most vigorous defense available in court."
But not. from. the. JUDGE.
Not a lawyer. I read somewhere that her statement said something about "don't try to jump to jury instructions before the trial starts you dummy!!!!!" when isn't that exactly what she was trying to do?
In criminal law, we use jury instructions to define the scope of issues. That's what she was doing. She was offering the parties the opportunity to draft their version of instructions that would show what they believe the scope of the PRA issue is. This is not unusual at all, and is especially common when, as here, no pattern instructions exist. There was never any indication at all that she intended to adopt either version as the final instruction.
The Government asked to have their instructions adopted as final, and she rightly told them that now is not the time.
On the contrary, she was offering two completely erroneous assumptions about what the scope of the PRA issue is (spoiler: there is in fact no PRA issue at all; it has no relevance whatsover) and demanding that they assume one of them was correct.
She demanded nothing. She properly denied the motion to dismiss, and declined the Government's demand that she adopt any proposed instruction touching on an affirmative defense as final.
Since you are so certain I'm wrong, Id love to hear your thoughts on what her nefarious plan is. I'd also be interested to know in what jurisdiction judges proscribe potential affirmative defenses in criminal cases sua sponte.
Your first paragraph ignores her original demand for the prosecution to choose between responding to two slightly different but equally bogus interpretations of the law and craft jury instructions reflecting the wrong law, instead only talking about the latest ruling.
Her nefarious plan is to issue utterly bogus jury instructions which direct a verdict for Trump.
I would be interested to know in what jurisdiction prosecutors are required to draft jury instructions on the assumption that affirmative defenses are correct. In particular this is absurd here when the defendant's claim to an affirmative defense is based on absolutely nothing in any law, but solely on web posts by a non-lawyer.
You do a fine job of repeating what you see in the Government's brief, but the Government does not decide the law of the case. The court does. The proper procedural tool for preventing the Defense from raising an affirmative defense that lacks legal merit is a motion in limine. US Attorneys file them all the time in criminal cases for exactly that reason. Presumably, once a trial date is set, the prosecutors in this case will do the same.
Your idea that Cannon plans some super-secret rule 29 coup presumes both that an entire team of US Attorneys is unfamiliar with the common procedure for snuffing out a legally insufficient affirmative defense and that Cannon doesn't expect them to find out it exists between now and when it rests. Moreover, it's odd that -- if her plan is to "issue utterly bogus jury instructions which direct a verdict for Trump" -- she didn't wait until the close of evidence to offer her instructions, as allowed by rule?
As far as your final question, the answer is every jurisdiction. Both parties regularly have to submit jury instructions based on what they believe to be the judge's incorrect interpretations of the law. It's rather the point. If everyone always agreed with the judge's statement of the law, Rule 30, and its State analogues, would be unnecessary. It's probably worth noting that parties aren't always afforded as much lead time as Cannon provided here. I recently had to submit a proposed instruction in a matter I thought wrongly decided, but I only received notice 4 days before trial (though that is one more day than the rule requires.)
What is the proper procedural tool for preventing the JUDGE from raising an affirmative defense on behalf of the defendant?
What makes you presume that this judge intends to set a trial date if she can possibly help it?
What makes you think that there is anything "super-secret" about Cannon's persistent sabotaging of the case?
Thank you
So I may have been jumping to conclusions in assuming she seemed biased towards team Trump when she was just following standard procedures? if so I stand corrected. Thanks again for the clarification.
She seems to be biased in favor of Trump, but not every decision is the result of bias or corruption. Prosecutors aren't infallible.
Fuck off, incompetent Federalist scum.
According to the tee vee lawyers I listen to, Jack Smith - having been around the block a few times and not having just fallen off a banana tree - saw Cannon's bizarre order for final instruction briefs on the question of Presidential Records Act relevancy to be nothing but a bald faced scheme to throw out the case once jeopardy had attached BECAUSE SUCH A RULING WOULD BE UNAPPEALABLE AT THAT POINT IN TIME AND NUMBNUTS McBIGMACS WOULD WALK FREE AND NOTHING SAID JACK SMITH COULD DO ABOUT IT. Here's another inside baseball thing about Cannon: Fuck you and see if Jack Smith is concerned about your feelings, you unqualified hack.
She is very qualified and in excellent position for one thing. Offering aid and assistance to TFG. Knowing that Cannon can throw up road blocks and delay the process, exactly what Trump wants, must be very frustrating for "said Jack Smith"
I have strong suspicions that Judge Cannon has a MAGA hat somewhere in her office.. Pretty sure she's a Trumpy
Having been born in Colombia, wouldn't Judge Cannon be part of that unsavory lot invading from the South?
Federalist Society must have been desperate the day Aileen entered the judge pipeline.
One more time --- she's MARRIED to a Fed Soccer who used to work for a member of the mafia.
The connection between said mafia and Leonard Leo is Opus Dei.
Jane Mayer's "Dark Money" needs to be required reading, but I've been saying that since she wrote it (which was well in time for the 2016 fauxlection and obviously not enough people heard me).
She was recommended by Marco Rubio with a second from Rick Scott then appointed by Trump Suggesting that she may not be unbiased would not be a stretch
She was also rammed through the Senate after Trump lost but before the J6 insurrection.
Federalist Society must have been desperate the day Aileen entered the judge pipeline.
CNN legal analyst Ryan Goodman commented this morning that by not ruling on the relevance of PRA pre-trial it leaves the door open for Cannon to decide mid trial and issue a judgement for acquittal on that basis. rule 29, which would further impede Smith. I'm not an attorney, and not exactly sure how that would work. Any lawyers here care to comment on this?
Alarmist nonsense.
When judges, clerks, and lawyers in criminal cases are confronted by an issue they aren't familiar with, they immediately turn to the jury instructions to inform their legal analysis. Here, you have a judge presented with a motion to dismiss that states a potential affirmative defense. This is an unusual charge, and an even more novel defense, so there are no pre-existing jury instructions. The judge requested the parties provide proposed instructions to frame the issue. Nothing about that is unusual.
She ruled on the motion. The Government demanded that she go even further and reject the affirmative defense as well by adopting its proposed instructions. She has no obligation to agree with the Government, and courts are loathe to proscribe a defense without full briefing and hearing. Moreover, she has no obligation to decide the issue at this point. Adopting a final jury instruction related to an affirmative defense before a trial is unheard of. That's what the Government was asking her to do: they wanted her to foreclose an affirmative defense by adopting a jury instruction prior to even taking any testimony. No judge is going to do that.
The Government has an avenue to deal with this. The Government can file a motion in limine prohibiting the Defense from raising recourse to the PRA as a defense. That's the proper way to foreclose an affirmative defense. The Government was trying to short-circuit the process. The judge doesn't have to let them do it.
"The judge requested the parties provide proposed instructions " on the assumption that the rectally-extracted argument was valid, with no alternative based on the assumption that the law states what it actually states quite clearly.
Drivel.
Thanks for making it clear that I needed to block you ages ago.
Okay so not just me then
C.mon now. Blocking people just for sharing facts or opinions we don't agree with is really Breitbarty, and why I've been permanently barred from Breitbart and a few other "conservative' sites
Nothing that he says is factual here.
Stop pontificating
Thanks for sharing opinions which could not possibly matter less to me.
Opinions are like something else that everyone possesses 🤣
that opinion's coming from a trial lawyer, who I would respect before any google-lawyer.
A trial lawyer who has many other people commenting that his posts are less than the epitome of erudition and logic.
Your blind respect for anyone with 'credentials' is duly noted and ridiculed.
That helps me understand this better Thanks much!!
Thank you very much for the informed context. That helps a lot.
Excellent post wasn't it We need much more of that informed context Round of applause for UncleTravelingMatt !!
I don't like our legal process. My mind rebels. The gap between "Lawful and Unlawful," and "Right and Wrong" is too wide for me to cope. I have the mental aptitude. I got a lot of encouragement to go to law school, which I could have done; and take up the Law. I just couldn't get past that moral hurdle. It caused me a lot of moral pain when I had jury duty a couple months ago, in fact.
My youngest brother is just enough dissimilar to me that he is a lawyer, and by all accounts a damn good one.
Every time I even cross the shadow of Law, I call him for advice, and I follow it to the letter.
When people want informed input on staging a live event, they call me, and that's smart. When I need informed input on the Law, I call my little brother, or another lawyer. I've found that to be smart, also.
Completely understand. There are three concepts or standards for behavior. legal, moral, and ethical. Of the three "legal" is the lowest hurdle to overcome. However, if you follow the other two, in all likelihood, everything you do will be "legal"
And that's how I've chosen to live my life.
Sometimes that does put me crosswise with "legal." But very rarely, and everyone else has decided to not notice. So far. That changes with Fascism.
So are we pretty sure Cannon is not doing her own homework here? The outrage is obviously hers, but the actual thinkerin? Seems too 3 dimensional chess for someone so manifestly unqualified.
Someone else named "Leonard Leo's disciple" is obviously doing her thinking for her
Seems more like she is trying to stack the deck for the former guy. Pushing right up against the line of doing something illegal. She is definitely part of the MAGAverse
I don't think anything "Uncle Traveling Matt" said takes that off the table, necessarily. But it does clear up the procedural angles to the immediate situation.
Maybe listen more to Laurence Tribe & Neal Katyal & less to that bothsidesing troll
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilqdRwyoKU
Can't do Katyal, Gorsuch's buddy. He also argued in front of the Supreme Court, on behalf of Nestle and Cargill, that all corporations should be exempt from the Alien Torts Act. The issue was child slavery. Katyal argued that an obligation to do anything about slave child labor providing their materials would put US corporations at a competitive disadvantage.
That may be a true statement he made. But I choose to not like him very much.
I'd be pretty pissed if my doctor was asking me to help him understand how a colonoscopy works.
Particularly if the doctor was asking you to assume that the colon can be reached through the urethra
At very least have some strong question of his competency
There has been some things written lately saying cannon is a previous appellate judge. That is why she over thinks these cases, looking at different sides of the case. I don’t think that is it. She is so out of her depth, she is floundering, trying to sound professional while desperately trying to let trump off. She is a disgrace.
Cannon was an assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of Florida. She was recommended for her current position by Marco Rubio seconded by Rick Scott and subsequently appointed by Trump. She is a Republican and strong DeSantis supporter Need I say more?
I don’t think she was an appellate judge but worked in the appellate division of whatever office (us attorney or AG?). But I agree she seems out of depth.
Out of depth, or just playing stupid to aid TFG