I'm repeating myself but the red states' presumptive decisions to no-charge, and presumptive not-guilty verdicts if tried, would be every bit as nakedly partisan and tribalistic.
Even more so, when you consider that a grand jury composed of ordinary citizens ultimately decided to charge Trump, and a jury of ordinary citizens weighed the evidence and found him guilty. Now, the old line is that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich,* and there is some truth to that. But it is certainly not true that a trial jury so easily convicts. Getting twelve ordinary citizens to unanimously agree that the prosecution proved each and every facet of the charges beyond a reasonable doubt - a threshold of certainty that you can roughly describe as 95%+ sure - and all twelve are needed for a conviction, 11-1 is a mistrial - is as good a hand-brake as you can get against government tyranny and politically motivated prosecutions.
the evidence was strong enough that most criminal defendants would have pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, which the prosecution would have offered in exchange for not having to try the case. He chose not to go that route. He wasn't obliged to. He had every right to seek total exoneration in court. He did. He had experienced and competent counsel. He had the opportunity to call whomever he wanted to call as witnesses and to present whatever evidence he chose to present. He had the opportunity to testify on his own behalf if he so chose, but the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, made applicable to state matters by the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids the prosecution from forcing him to incriminate himself, so he could not be compelled to testify. I don't do criminal trial work, but I do hearings of quasi-criminal matters. No attorney in his right mind EVER has his client testify because if the defendant testifies he can be cross-examined under oath on his testimony,. Since the prosecution has the burden of proof- the defense does not have to prove innocence, the defense does not have to affirmatively prove anything, it can offer evidence of a counter-narrative that defeats the prosecution's theory of the case if that's the best way to sow doubt in the jury's minds, but it's the prosecution that has to prove X, Y, and Z in order to sustain the conviction - so the defense has no duty, and the defendant has the right to decline from, putting the defendant on the stand to give the prosecution the rope with which to hang him. Despite the many reasons not to do so - and i would have told him not to, as his counsel- he had the right to get up there and tell his own story, subject to opening the door to cross-examination, if he so chose.
He chose to go to trial. Ordinary people heard the evidence. Some had voted for Trump. They convicted him. The system worked.
I'd be interested to know what should have been done differently.
