I teach Trial Advocacy in a law school. The course is basic training for courtroom litigation, in which students learn the fundamentals of trial practice. Foremost of those fundamentals is that the purpose of a trial is to discover the truth.
A properly conducted trial will accomplish that fundamental goal, by sifting thru and weighing, the evidence to reveal what actually happened. Though like any system created by humans it’s not foolproof, it works the overwhelming majority of the time and has proven to be better than all other systems at exonerating the wrongly accused. This recent political farce called an impeachment “trial” has proven that to be true even when the trial process is corrupted.
Calling that farce which took place in the United States Senate an impeachment “trial” bastardizes not only the meaning, but the very concept. It was choreographed political theater intended to satisfy the lust for vengeance by Democrats reminiscent of Nero slaughtering Christians in the Coliseum after scapegoating them for the fire that destroyed Rome.
Every other impeachment trial in our history has been presided over by a Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Real “trials” are presided over by impartial judges whose only interest in the matter is to assure rules are followed so that both sides are treated fairly, and receive “due process of law”.
Even non-lawyers understand why the same person should not act as both “judge and jury”, particularly if that person is affiliated with one of the parties to the trial. The worst case scenario would be an accused having to stand trial presided over by a Judge who was part of the prosecution team, and who would also vote as a juror. No one would call that justice. Yet that is exactly what happened in this latest impeachment “trial” of Donald Trump.
This impeachment spectacle was presided over by one of the partisans who were prosecuting. Democrat Senate President pro tem Patrick Leahy, presided. Apparently no Justice could be persuaded to participate in this unconstitutional sham, or the Senate Democrats didn’t want to risk having an impartial arbiter ruling on their evidence. So instead they got Leahy, one of their own partisans, who previously voted to impeach Trump. This time Leahy was literally both Judge and Juror. In what alternative universe is that “due process of law”?
In real trials, jurors are instructed they can not base their verdict on whether they are angry at anyone. Anger at Trump was the sole motivation, and very essence of this impeachment.
Equally ridiculous was how the media covered the “trial”. So-called legal “experts” criticized Trump’s lawyers during the course of the proceeding.
The performance of a trial lawyer is determined solely by the outcome. I tell my students that at the end of a trial the jury will tell you how you did. You either win, or lose. There is no second place, and there are no points for “style”. No lawyer worth an damn should ever the criticize the performance of another lawyer who wins, because trials are not about the lawyers – they are about the result for the client.
Trump was acquitted. That’s the only measure of how his lawyers performed.
But the most egregious revelation in the trial was that the prosecution had doctored evidence. The prosecution changed the date on a Twitter post from 2020 to 2021 to make it appear the post was contemporaneous with the January 6 event, when in fact it was a year earlier. The other thing they did was alter a Twitter post to indicate it was from a “verified source” when in fact it was not. The prosecution then introduced those posts as evidence of Trump inciting the January 6 event.
As a career prosecutor I can think of no worse conduct by a prosecutor. If the “impeachment managers” who did so are lawyers, they should be disbarred in what ever jurisdictions they are licensed. The fact the media tried to portray this fabrication as no big deal reflects the difference between their non-existent ethical standards, and those which are supposed to apply to members of the legal profession.
This Senate impeachment show by the Democrats was Pythonesque. They rigged it in lieu of having any actual evidence, yet still couldn’t convict him. If they were my students they’d get an “F” for the class.
So the trial served it’s purpose. It exposed the truth of the fallacy of the Democrats’ case, and produced the correct result.
The falsely accused defendant was vindicated. Justice was served.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.