I was talking about the Bragg case, not the DC case. The 6th Amendment requires "an impartial jury." Tell me you believe that Trump was likely to find an impartial jury there. If so, you are giving Bragg and Merchan too much credit. If Merchan allowed a venue change, I think it's likely that his superiors would not be pleased. Still, I think that would have been fair, because while the 6th Amendments requirement of an "impartial jury" in this case contradicts the requirement that it be held in the district where the alleged crime occurred, I believe the first requirement should surmount the latter.
I am not sure it makes sense to say that all these alleged crimes would have been committed in Manhattan. Payments today are not necessarily as physical as they were in 1791. And IMO it's nonsense to try to assign a place to the so-called "crime" of intent to influence an election.
I did not know that Cochran had talked Garcetti into holding the trial in LA (and so there was no change of venue as such), but I assume you are correct about the jury pool.
Cochran had nothing to do with it. The events of June 1994 predated his July 1994 hiring by O.J. Simpson.
The Superior Court in downtown LA had a history of moving the large publicity cases to the downtown court which was better equipped to handle them. Garcetti filed in the Central Division downtown as the case was likely to be moved there by the court anyway. A contributing factor may have been that the Santa Monica court still suffered from earthquake damage.
A 2016 statement of Gil Garcetti supports the jury pool assertion.
The (sort-of) regrets of Gil Garcetti: ‘O.J.: Made in America’s’ reluctant star witnessLA Times
By Steven Zeitchik
June 15, 2016 3 AM PT[excerpt]
He waved aside the idea, for instance, that he should have kept the trial in Santa Monica instead of moving it downtown, with its higher proportion of African Americans in the jury pool. (“It’s a false argument — it would have been a countywide selection.”)
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I was talking about the Bragg case, not the DC case. The 6th Amendment requires "an impartial jury." Tell me you believe that Trump was likely to find an impartial jury there.
I'm not sure Trump was going to get an impartial jury anywhere. Probably a significant majority of the American people are biased for or against Trump. A sufficient number of the jury pool will say they are capable of deciding on the evidence and the law. It is not quite clear what Trump was charged with or convicted of.
More importantly, the trial's lawfare purpose is to label Trump a convicted felon thru the election. For lawfare purposes, the First Division and the Court of Appeals may run out the clock until election day and then overturn and remand to the lower court for the least harmful technical reason. That way, the U.S. Supreme Court never gets to take up the case and issue an opinion.
I would say it was about the most reversible case in memory but along came Judge Glanville in Fulton County, Georgia demanding from the bench, the identity of the person who leaked information about the illegal ex parte meeting he held in his own chambers. Not even Judge Merchan or Judge Engoron could compete with that.
I don't think the New York judges are overly concerned about being overturned on appeal. As long as Trump is a convicted bad guy on election day, lawfare purposes are served.
In the Babbitt case, the factor that apparently weighed most heavily was the inconvenience to the witnesses to travel to California for depositions and testimony regarding a crime that occurred in DC.