But it is unclear whether the judge could have allowed a jury trial had Trump’s lawyers requested one, they noted.ĭavid Schoen, an attorney on Trump’s defense team in his second impeachment trial, said on “CNN This Morning” Tuesday that he would have tried to seek a jury trial if he was handling Trump’s case, though he noted that in a previous 2011 case under the same statute, a judge found there was no right to a jury trial. In Trump’s case, the New York attorney general’s office wants the former president to be essentially banned from doing business in New York – asking a judge to, among other things, cancel the Trump Organization’s corporate certificate and to impose a financial penalty for what they estimated is $250 million in ill-gotten gains – all of which are examples of equitable relief.īecause of that, experts say, Engoron was not required to give Trump a jury trial. Equitable relief can be a court injunction or the return of profits obtained illegally. Under the Seventh Amendment of the Constitution, defendants have a right to a jury trial in civil cases seeking monetary damages.Ĭases seeking “equitable relief” – like this civil fraud case in New York – don’t hold the same constitutional protection, experts in New York law told CNN. Jean Carroll in 1996, attorney Joe Tacopina said that Trump is “firm in his belief” that he cannot get a fair trial in New York City “based on the jury pool.” After a New York jury found that Trump sexually abused E. In other legal cases that the former president has faced, however, Trump and his attorneys have lamented that he is unable to receive a fair verdict from a jury in New York. “It is unfortunate that a jury won’t be able to hear how absurd the merits of this case are and conclude no wrongdoing ever happened.”

“There was never an option to choose a jury trial,” the spokesperson said. “Under 63 (12), which is what this case is, you don’t have a right, an absolute right to a jury,” Trump lawyer Alina Habba said on Fox News this week.Ī Trump spokesperson said that the attorney general “filed this case under a consumer protection statute that denies the right to a jury.” Trump’s lawyers have pushed back on the notion that they failed to request a jury trial, as some have suggested based on paperwork filed in the case.

“Neither side asked for one and, in any event, the remedies sought are all equitable in nature, mandating that the trial be a bench trial, one that a judge alone decides.” “You have probably noticed or already read that this case has no jury,” Engoron said. “But Trump’s legal team absolutely could have requested a jury, litigated the issue, and then appealed had they lost.”Īt the start of the trial, Engoron noted that no parties in the case requested a jury trial and that the law mandated a “bench trial” decided by a judge. “It’s not entirely clear whether Trump would have been entitled to a jury trial under New York law – that would depend on nuanced legal determinations about the nature of the remedy sought by the attorney general,” said Elie Honig, a CNN senior legal analyst and former federal and New Jersey prosecutor.

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