Convicted felon Donald J. Trump is STILL a defendant and we should not forget this

So, time for a little bit of Jura 101. This OP is going to anger many Trump followers, but I challenge you to actually debate the logic behind this. Imagine that the defendant in question is not named Trump and see how you would react.

When a person is indicted, that results in some form of arrest, either until the beginning of the trial or perhaps the indicted person goes free on his or her own recognizance (bond) until the trial begins. The moment an indicted person appears before the designated judge (or his appointed proxy) in the first pre-trial hearing, that person becomes a "defendant" and either ceases to be a defendant if the jury acquits him or REMAINS a defendant if the jury decision is guilty. So, this historical fork in the road decides a person's status as a continuing or former defendant.

In the latter case, that person remains a defendant until the sentencing and should his attorney decide to appeal the case, he rechnically remains a defendant even until all appeals are cleared one way or the other.

In other words, once you are a defendant in the US justice system, regardless of state in the Union (because this principle is used in all 50 states, DC and the territories as well, without exception), you remain a defendant until all aspects of the trial (including possible sentencing, appeals or post-conviction petition) is over with.

This means that all conditions set by a judge for a defendant remain in effect until that person is either pronounced not-guilty or has been served his punishment and all appeals (if any) have been exhausted.

The judge has a lot of decisions to make and this is why time is allowed between the jury verdict and the actual sentencing. This is also why in most all cases, juries do not decide on the punishment, but rather, a judge with training and experience. During this time, the judge will receive and/or evaulate, among other things:

-sentencing recommendations from the prosecution and the defense
-the probation officer's evaulation of the defendant based on at least one meeting
-possible victim impact statements
-mitigating versus aggravating factors and -
-the behavior of the defendant pre-trial, during the trial and in the interim period between the verdict and the sentencing.

Alll judges in the USA are bound either by state or federal punishment guidelines as they decide vis-a-vis sentencing whether the sentence is punative or rehabilitative, or maybe a combination of both. If the sentence is punative, the judge can weigh between incarceration, probation and/or a financial fine. It can even be all three, for instance, if each of the 34 counts could mean 4 years in prison, that would be 136 years in prison, but he could say that actual prison time would be for the first of the 34 counts (4 years actually behind real bars) and then, based on good behavior, as of the 5th year, the prison sentence could be converted to probation. In fact, the prison sentence could also be house arrest right from the get-go. It is extremely rare that a judge goes against the guilty verdict from a jury and decides to let the defendant go scot-free. I don't recall this ever happening but surely there that been times when this has happened. However, you will notice that the Trump defense team has not mentioned this at all, and my God, they have mentioned all sorts of weird **** in the past number of weeks....

Mitigating factor is that Trump is a first time offender. That would speak, without any other factors, for a light sentence.

Aggravating factor has been his horrible, illegal behavior all through this process.
Also aggravating is that he has not for even one second shown any form of remorse. That would speak, without any other factors, for a harsher sentence.

So, Trump's team has options in asking for leniency, that is the most they can do right now. In the case of any form of imprisonment, they could ask for a light house arrest, with an electronic ankle-bracelet and a streamlined process for him to be allowed to leave the house as long as he honors all the conditions the judge may set for such a light sentence.

But Judge Merchan also has options. One option that I find very possible is that Merchan agrees to the lightest possible penalty for Trump, but finds him in contempt of court for all of his shenanigans during the trial and throws him in jail for a number of days or weeks pending the expected appeals process. This would force the defense to decide whether or not to appeal, for perhaps the judge would not be inclined to throw him in jail for contempt of court (a theme totally separate from the actual case itself) or maybe for just a couple of days as a warning shot across his bow were the defense to agree to not go into appeal. Because unneccessary appeals waste time and money and the court system is busy enough as it is. This kind of brinksmanship is something that has happened in the past. It is also completely legal under the idea that it can serve to be rehabilitative.

But the prosecution would probably have a heavy reaction to this, as would be expected. So, I doubt this would go quite this way.

The judge has already seen that Trump was still incourageable after being fined 11 times for contempt of court, so a financial penalty is unlikely to convice the defendant to actually want to make amends. I consider a financial-only penalty to be very unlikely.

What I am saying is that under no circumstance is Trump going to get off scot-free and his behavior between now and July 11th will probably be either a mitigating or aggravating factor.

The judge is in no way obliged to consider that the sentencing will happen directly before the Republican National Convention, where Trump is expected to join Grover Cleveland, William Jennings Bryan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Richard Nixon and be nominated for at least a third time by the same major political party.

Usually, after a sentencing, if it is incarceration, a date is set for the defendant to have to report to jail. For poor people, this luxury does not exist, but for VIPs it does, for better or worse. The judge knows this, but he also knows that a jail sentence for contempt of court completely independent of the jury verdict can be immediate and there is nothing that Trump can do about this. This is the wild-card that the judge can play and with all of the stuff that Trump has said, Judge Merchan would have more than ample ammunition to prove his point.

And trust me, Trump's lawyers, if they are halfway competent, have already told him this.

One of Trump's biggest blunders was the decision to not show any remorse at all. Congenital psychopaths rarely show remorse.

The presidential debate on the 27th of June will be a test to see if Trump can keep his mouth closed about things related to the gag order or if he simply cannot control himself. Worse yet, if he goes against the gag order on national TV in from of what I expect it going to be massive audience, this could have long-term effects for the convicted felon.

-Stat

 

Too much for me to read. Besides, Trump has proven he is still better for the country than Biden.
Even if you say Trump is a liar, his feet stink, and he don't love Jesus -- I'll still prefer him over Biden based on their record as president.

 

We really don't see the left comparing each of the records, all they do is attack Trump and rarely promote Biden, if ever.

 

Trump is a nationalist
Biden is a globalist
Get It or not

 

Would a convicted felon, under normal circumstance be allowed to carry a gun? No? Then why the **** are you willing to let a convicted felon anywhere near the nuclear codes!!

 

Really? How many of those who worked for him last time are willing to do so again? Think on this because not even his wife and daughter are showing up this time!

 

Well done, all the DNC and MSNBCNN efforts have done their job.

Only problem, we need a Juneteenth commercial to round out this fabulous holiday..

 

Holy hell, that was odd, but I digress, we let a senile brain bleeder do it..

 

But lets also not forget that Biden is not competent to even stand trial.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/20...ent-bidens-mental-fitness-triggers-rcna137975

 

Well unlike Trump, Bidummy's wife is the puppet master and his daughter still has shower nightmares of him, and sad part is he has to be introduced to both of them every morning

 

Lols! On the back of Trump calling Joe Biden “Joe Bride. His glitching is getting worse

 

Stll competent to stand trial tho. Recently proven

 

Biden's a chester. No doubt about it

 

I agree. In another thread, I posited that elected democrats are diabolically evil, and elected republicans are stubbornly stupid. Given a choice between those, I will vote against evil every time, no matter who opposes it.

 

And oddly enough it's all going to be perfectly timed not to be resolved until sometime after November. Imagine that.

But of course the timing is nothing but a large coincidence and has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he's running for president in the next election. How gullible would anyone have to be to believe that?

 

If he is then Biden certainly is since Biden has been showing far fewer signs of dementia. But Trumps competence has not been finalised since he has yet to be sentenced and I have more than a suspicion he may be requested to undergo psych evaluation since he can’t remember the name of the MD who administered his last MOCA test

 

Lols! “democrats are diabolically evil” lols! Listening to too much right wing media?

 

Yep! Since Garland slow walked the indictments and did not proceed on some of them. He should have already been on trial but people like “loose” Cannon and the Supremes have held up proceedings until post November so the “election” interference excuse has sort of died at this point. Btw three more of his previous lawyers have just been indicted

 

I agree..

 

Then again, lots of editing goes into foreign news services.. And then think about the Russian and Chines paid propagandists.God knows what sort of propaganda other countries are being saturated with

 

It would be a travesty if a crooked judge and 12 biased Democrat Manhattan jurors determined the 2024 presidential election, but that might be the case.

 

The only reason Biden isnt on trial too is because of his age and poor memory. That is nothing short of 'not competent ...to stand trial.' So in the eyes of our own courts, Trump is more mentally competent than Biden.

Its all in the link I provided from CBSNews that you apparently skipped.

 

No that was the RWM spin. If you read the report THERE WASNT ENOUGH EVIDENCE. Plus there wasn’t “top secret” docs just “please be careful” classified docs AND Biden co-operated. What they could not prove was that those docs were put there by Biden and not a staffer

 

Its not 'spin', its a direct quote from special council:

"In deciding not to charge Biden with any crimes, the special counsel wrote that in a potential trial, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”"

 

Yes but THAT was opinion the report said something different besides he is NOT a health professional. Meanwhile health professionals are speaking out about Trumps clear signs in his paraphasias