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I believe the former federal elections commissioner wanted to testify saying it was not a crime. I don’t know rules of evidence that well but that sounds like a guy very qualified to explain the evidence.
The relevant rule of evidence here is that the judge is responsible for determining what the law is and instructing the jury accordingly. The parties can bring witnesses to testify about the facts of the case but they can't bring witnesses to make arguments to the jury about what the law is.
If the judge gets the law wrong, that's an appealable error.
The prosecution actually asserted it was a fact that there was a campaign finance violation. In addition, the judge permitted Michael fucking Cohen to testify about his understanding of FECA. So yes you are correct abstractly but wrong as it was applied in this case.
Once the judge allowed Cohen to say what he said the only effective curative would’ve been to allow Smith to testify or declare a mistrial.
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This is a distinction without a difference when the facts of the case hinge on what the law is in actual application, which thus shapes the facts of what intent should be on the part of the accused, which the witness forbidden to testify was the best able to speak to.
Googling this to refresh my memory. Turns out the judge didn’t bar the former FEC guy from testifying. The judged barred him from giving expert opinion on the law.
I guess for rules of evidence it’s probably legally correct. There is a bigger problem here because when cases get more complex judges become less of the expert on the law.
The felony case is a lot like the judge telling the jury that eating a ham sandwich is murder. And then they showed a picture of Trump eating a ham sandwich.
But again the problem is he allowed Cohen to testify as to what Cohen understood the law to be. So basically the judge spoke out of both sides of his mouth.
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And then banning the chief enforcer of Don't Eat Ham Sandwiches from attesting that what was being presented as a ham sandwich was actually a ham taco, and would not be considered a ham sandwich by the Ministry of Don't Eat Ham Sandwiches.
The judge's rulings on a point of law are binding unless appealed. That you can't put up a legal expert to explain to the jury why the judge is wrong on the law is Courtroom Procedure 101. In a better legal system, this point probably should have been resolved on an interlocutory appeal before trial, but in the US system as it exists that wouldn't have helped because the appeal would have gone to a NY State appeals court, and what is actually needed is a Federal ruling on a difficult technical point of Federal law.
The US system (going right back to the Constitution making federal trial courts optional and the Federalist Papers explaining that federal law could be enforced in State courts) assumes that state courts can be trusted to get federal law right. The ways a federal court can overrule a State court on a point of federal law are deliberately restricted.
Ordinarily yes but obviously this is a loophole in the 7th Amendment if violation of that law is an element of the crime, and the judge can simply rule that law to be constructively violated.
Consider two laws: a law against disorderly conduct, and a law against wearing a mask while committing a crime. And the prosecutor brings a case against you for the charge of wearing a mask while committing a crime, accusing you of committing disorderly conduct while masked up. You definitely were masked up, but deny that you were disorderly. Should the judge be allowed to simply rule that you were committing the crime of disorderly conduct for the purpose of this prosecution, without ever proving the elements of the crime, and despite you never being charged with disorderly conduct?
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