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The jury of seven men and five women was sent into a private room just before 11.30am on Wednesday (1.30am Thursday AEST) to begin weighing a verdict in the first criminal trial of a former US president.
Jurors’ deliberations will be secret, although they can send notes to the judge asking him to repeat the testimony. In this way, they will notify the court of a verdict or if they cannot reach one.
“It’s not my responsibility to weigh the evidence here. It’s yours,” Judge Juan M Mercan told jurors.
Trump struck a pessimistic tone after leaving the courtroom after an hour-long reading of jury instructions, repeating his claims of a “very unfair trial.”
“Mother Teresa could not defeat these accusations, but we will see. We’ll see how we do,” he said.
Trump and his lawyers, along with prosecutors, were instructed to remain inside the courthouse during the deliberations.
While he waited behind closed doors there, he continued to make a series of posts on his social network, complaining about the trial and citing legal and political commentators who saw the case in his favor.
In one all-caps post, he said: “I don’t even know what the charges are in this trumped-up case – I’m as entitled to specifics as anyone else.” And added: “There is no crime!”
Trump has been charged with 34 counts of falsifying business records at his company in connection with an alleged scheme to cover up potentially embarrassing stories about him during his 2016 Republican presidential campaign.
The felony charge stems from reimbursements paid to then-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen after he made a secret $US130,000 ($196,000) payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels to silence her allegations that the two had sex in 2006
Trump is accused of misrepresenting Cohen’s reimbursements as legal expenses to hide that they were tied to the payment of hush money.
Trump has pleaded not guilty and claims the payments to Cohen were for legitimate legal services.
He also denied the alleged extramarital sexual relationship with Daniels.
To convict Trump, jurors would have to unanimously find that he created a fraudulent entry in his company’s records or caused someone else to do so, and that he did so with the intent to commit or conceal another crime.
Criminal prosecutors say what Trump did or concealed is a violation of New York’s election law, which makes it illegal for two or more conspirators to “promote or prevent the election of any person to public office by unlawful means.”
Although the jury must unanimously agree that something illegal was done to promote Trump’s campaign, they do not have to be unanimous about what that illegal thing was.
Jurors — a diverse group of Manhattanites and professional backgrounds — often seemed transfixed by testimony at trial, including from Cohen and Daniels. Many took notes and watched closely as witnesses answered questions from Manhattan prosecutors and Trump’s lawyers.
Defense counsel spoke about half of that time; Trump’s team does not have to prove his innocence to avoid a conviction, but instead must rely on at least one juror finding that prosecutors did not sufficiently prove their case.
The vote to impeach Donald Trump has been finalized in writing
Earlier Wednesday, jurors were instructed in the law by Murchan, who offered some guidance on the factors the panel could use to evaluate testimony, including its believability, its consistency with other testimony, the witness’s demeanor on the stand and whether the person has a motive to lie.
But, the judge said, “there is no specific formula for evaluating the truth and accuracy of another person’s statement.”
The principles he outlined are standard, but perhaps even more relevant now that Trump’s defense has leaned heavily on questioning the credibility of key prosecution witnesses, including Cohen.
Murchan also instructed jurors on the concept of vicarious liability, whereby a defendant can be held criminally responsible for the actions of someone else.
That’s a key component of the prosecution’s theory in the case because while Trump was signing some of the checks in question, people working for his company were processing Cohen’s invoices and entering the transactions into her accounting system.
To hold Trump accountable for those actions, Murchan said, jurors must find beyond a reasonable doubt that he incited, solicited or ordered those people to engage in that behavior and that he acted intentionally.
Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass touched on accessory after the fact in his closing argument Tuesday.
“No one is saying that the accused actually got behind a computer and entered the fake vouchers or stamped the fake invoices or printed the fake checks,” he said.
“But he set in motion a chain of events that led to the creation of the false business records.”
Any verdict must be unanimous. During deliberations, six alternate jurors, who also attended every minute of the trial, will be kept in the courthouse in a separate room in case they are needed to replace a juror who becomes ill or is otherwise unavailable.
If that happens, deliberations will begin again after the new juror is seated.
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