It took four days to seat 12 jurors and six alternates to serve on the historic first criminal trial of a former U.S. president. But if New York Judge Juan Merchan decides it necessary to sequester them to protect them and also limit the exposure to the rabid interest on the hush money case — it could be a very involved process.
"The logistics of sequestering a jury... are really daunting and the expense is high and jurors don't like it, necessarily," retired federal judge John Jones III said during a panel discussion on CNN. "I agree that defense attorneys typically don't like it either."
Notably two empaneled jurors in former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial were dismissed on Thursday over a potential bias. There may soon be unrelenting scrutiny and even skepticism that the jurors and alternates can remain objective in an epic trial that is expected to last weeks.
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Sequestration remains a lever that Merchan might pull, the former jurist said.
The decision would have some consequences.
The deciders in the case would be forced to remain remote likely in hotel rooms and give up the comforts and lives of their homes in order to silo them from access to "other people, radio, television news, and newspapers is limited,” according to Forbes, citing New York’s juror’s handbook.
While Jones III has a dim sense of sequestering, he admits that his directives to jurors over the many years he served on the bench likely were met with deaf ears.
"I'll tell you what at the end of a trial I would typically say to juries, 'Don't read anything about this case, don't research it, don't get on the internet, don't do your own looking into the details!' and you know, I always thought there's a certain number of jurors that would go home and they jump right onto Google and check the case out."
"So it is perilous that no matter what admonitions you give, unless the juror gets on social media, there's really no way to check whether they've done some kind of sidebar research on the case and that is a problem."
The only recourse, he said, would have a juror haunted by the truth, to come forward and "admit that they did it."
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