The New York Court of Appeals has upheld the ruling by the trial judge we closed yesterday’s article with.
“Defendant argues that CPL 30.10 (4) (a) has only been applied to cases involving nonresidents,” the Court of Appeals stated. However, “[n]owhere does this provision distinguish between residents and nonresidents and we cannot read into the statute a limitation not adopted by the legislature…If the legislature intended this tolling provision to apply only to nonresidents or that courts should factor residency into a tolling analysis, it would have said so expressly.” (Citation omitted.)
Further, “the statute [does not] contain any requirement that the tolling period apply once authorities know that a crime has been committed and, as with defendant’s proposed exclusion for New York residents, we reject defendant’s invitation to rewrite the statute to provide such limitation.”
Thus, it is irrelevant whether Donald Trump was a resident of New York or not, nor does it matter whether or not the New York County District Attorney had any intention to charge the former President with a crime at the time the offense allegedly occurred. The time he spent outside New York stops the Statute of Limitations from running out.
But what if Donald Trump (like Weinstein) had been in and out of New York during the time period in question? According to the Court of Appeals, “‘all periods of a day or more’ during a defendant’s absence from the state ‘should be totaled and toll the Statute of Limitations’…Logically, then, even a day’s absence counts.” (Citation omitted.)
Thus, as we warned in May of last year, the prosecution of Donald Trump is not time-barred, based upon the extended time periods he spent outside of New York, serving his country as President of the United States.
This issue, while significant, is only one ruling which could impact the Trump case.
During the trial, we have witnessed several rulings which affect the former President’s ability to defend himself. For instance, in their opening statement to the jury, Prosecutors stated “This case is about a criminal conspiracy and a cover-up…[t]he defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 election, then covered it up.” In fact, according to The Hill, “[a]lthough Trump faces charges of falsifying business records, prosecutors will tell jurors a story that ranges from sex to politics to accounting, attempting to convince them that Trump criminally covered up a hush money deal to influence the 2016 presidential election. The district attorney’s first oration to the jury echoed two of Trump’s other criminal cases, which revolve around his alleged attempts to subvert the 2020 presidential election results after losing to President Biden. “It was election fraud – pure and simple,” [the prosecutor] said in his opening remarks.”
Donald Trump is charged with falsifying his business records to disguise a “hush money” payment made to a woman who alleged he had an affair with her. That charge has been elevated to a felony based upon an intent to hide an underlying crime. The crime has never been adequately specified, but it appears to involve the violation of federal elections laws that enumerate the appropriate expenditure of campaign contributions. Now the Manhattan DA’s office is changing their theory by claiming the underlying crime is outright federal election fraud – an uncharged crime.
Further, “[i]f Donald Trump takes the stand, prosecutors will be allowed to grill him under oath about several adverse rulings in his past civil cases, Justice Juan Merchan ruled…Prosecutors will be allowed to elicit testimony about Trump being found liable for fraudulently inflating his business assets in a suit brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. They will also be allowed to question him about defamatory statements he made about writer E. Jean Carroll. In a civil case last year, a federal jury determined that Trump sexually abused Carroll in a department store in the 1990s, and in two civil cases, Trump was found liable for defaming Carroll. Merchan also ruled that, if Trump testifies, prosecutors can ask him about fines he received for violating a gag order in the business fraud case when he verbally attacked the law clerk of the judge overseeing that case.”
Even Politico had to concede that this was “a significant loss for the former president that will complicate his self-declared plan to testify in his own defense.”
This ruling is much more than a “loss” that complicates Trump’s ability to testify in his own defense. In fact, if Judge Merchan maintains this position, and also lets stand the prosecutor’s attempts to use proof that Trump allegedly “subverted” the 2020 Presidential election, under the Court of Appeals’ ruling in the Weinstein case, permitting these prejudicial matters into evidence is most certainly reversible error.
“Every person accused of a crime is constitutionally presumed innocent and entitled to a fair trial and the opportunity to present a defense, the Court of Appeals states in People v. Weinstein. “Under our system of justice, the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality… It is our solemn duty to diligently guard these rights regardless of the crime charged, the reputation of the accused, or the pressure to convict.”
In Harvey Weinstein’s case, “the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes because that testimony served no material non-propensity purpose. The court compounded that error when it ruled that defendant, who had no criminal history, could be cross examined about those allegations as well as numerous allegations of misconduct that portrayed defendant in a highly prejudicial light. The synergistic effect of these errors was not harmless. The only evidence against defendant was the complainants’ testimony, and the result of the court’s rulings, on the one hand, was to bolster their credibility and diminish defendant’s character before the jury. On the other hand, the threat of a cross-examination highlighting these untested allegations undermined defendant’s right to testify. The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
In other words, several witnesses were allowed to testify against Weinstein as to sexual assaults with which Weinstein was not charged. These witnesses could portray Weinstein as a serial sexual predator, and make it more likely that the jury would believe the victims, even if there were weaknesses and inconsistencies in their own testimony. Moreover, the prosecution could question Weinstein about these uncharged assaults, were he to testify in his own defense.
Certainly, it is understandable for some to believe that Weinstein was, in fact, a loathsome person who deserved his conviction and sentence. Well that may be – but remember the words of the Court of Appeals; “the accused has a right to be held to account only for the crime charged and, thus, allegations of prior bad acts may not be admitted against them for the sole purpose of establishing their propensity for criminality.”
There are those who think Donald Trump is a loathsome person, and that the former President also deserves a conviction and prison sentence. These people justify the use of evidence of prior “bad acts,” such as allegations of trying to influence the 2020 Presidential election, or the existence of civil verdicts and contempt citations, in an effort to establish Trump’s “propensity for criminality.” Like the #MeToo advocates, the Trump Haters don’t care about a fair trial for the accused – they just want to see the “bad guy” punished.
If we learn one thing from the reversal of the Weinstein conviction, it’s that every defendant, no matter who they are, deserves to have a fair trial. That rule applies to rich Hollywood Producers, former Presidents of the United States – and most importantly, to you and I.
Judge John Wilson served on the bench in NYC
Illustration: Pixabay