Chances of Trump Trial Having Hung Jury ‘Far Higher’ Than Normal—Attorney

As former President Donald Trump’s criminal hush money trial winds down, with closing arguments set for Tuesday, the chances of a hung jury “are far higher than in a normal case,” former federal and state prosecutor Elie Honig said.

In an Intelligencer article Friday morning, Honig, a CNN legal analyst, outlined the basic principles of criminal juries, urging readers to “consider the difficulty of getting any 12 people to agree on anything,” and especially when the stakes are “liberty or prison.”

Following an investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was indicted in March 2023 on 34 counts of falsifying business records, accused of attempting to conceal hush money paid to adult-film star Stormy Daniels by Trump’s then-lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen during Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Daniels had alleged she had an affair with Trump in 2006, which he has denied. The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges and said the case against him is politically motivated.

“A guilty verdict remains probable in my view—but the chances of a hung jury (and the resulting mistrial) are far higher than in a normal case,” Honig wrote. While the majority of federal criminal trials end in convictions, largely because the prosecution tends to bring cases they are confident can “overwhelm a jury,” Honig says that Trump’s case may be a little different.

Newsweek reached out to Honig for additional comment via email on Friday afternoon.

After closing arguments, which begin on Tuesday, the jury will begin deliberations. In a criminal trial, a jury must find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt; if not, the defendant is deemed not guilty. The jury must submit a unanimous vote; otherwise, it is considered hung. “One dissenter tanks the whole enterprise,” Honig said.

The legal analyst characterized the evidence against Trump as “middling—not overwhelming, not patently deficient, but somewhere toward the lower end of that spectrum.” He pointed out that the prosecution’s case “rests largely on the word of a star witness” in Cohen, a disbarred lawyer who previously pleaded guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.

In addition to Cohen’s legal history, Honig described him as “driven to white-hot, all-consuming personal obsession with seeing the defendant rot in prison” and as someone who has financially profited from his commentary about Trump.

While acknowledging that “Cohen is corroborated in key respects by financial documents and other independent evidence,” Honig said that the jury “cannot convict Trump without relying on uncorroborated aspects of Cohen’s testimony to link the defendant directly to the charged accounting crimes.”

Jonathan Turley, a frequent Fox commentator and professor at George Washington University Law School, told Newsweek in an email Friday afternoon, “I believe that a hung jury is a real possibility.”

He added, “I would currently put a hung jury as the most likely outcome of the three outcomes,” in reference to a conviction, acquittal or hung jury.

“I recognize that this is the worst possible jury pool for Trump,” Turley wrote, presumably due to the former president’s previous low polling in the predominantly Decmocratic New York City. However, he added, “I have often seen jurors overcome bias and I am hoping that these jurors will redeem the integrity of the New York legal system with at least a hung jury.”

“I do not see a real possibility of an acquittal,” which would mean exonerating Trump, “while a conviction is clearly a possibility,” Turley added.

Barbara McQuade, law professor at the University of Michigan and former U.S. attorney, told Newsweek in an email on Thursday: “It is always difficult to predict what juries might do because they each come to court with their own experiences and worldviews, and because they had the advantage of seeing up close every moment of the trial.”

She added, “But the prosecution has certainly provided sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”

With what Honig called “a uniquely polarizing defendant in Trump,” the jury could surprise us in many ways. The jury’s verdict will come at a time when the 2024 presidential race is extremely tight, with FiveThirtyEight’s most recent aggregation poll showing Trump leading Biden by 1.5 percentage points.