'Unusual inclusion' in E. Jean Carroll jury instructions helped seal Trump's fate: expert

According to former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a cautionary warning provided to the jury deciding the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial by the judge all but assured there would be no jury nullification in support of Donald Trump.

On her Substack platform, the former prosecutor admitted she had never seen anything quite like the comments made by U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Senior Judge Lewis Kaplan as he sent the jury off to decide the case that ended with the former president being slapped with an $83.3 million judgment.

While praising Kaplan for keeping the trial on track and not putting up with any foolishness from Trump and his lead attorney Alina Habba, Vance suggested a key turning point came when Kaplan made an "unusual" appeal to the jurors.

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Pointing out that Trump was likely banking on "jury nullification" from just one juror to avoid a massive penalty, Vance wrote, "Judge Kaplan had an unusual inclusion in his jury instructions, something I’ve never heard a judge do before. He read from the Constitution. He talked about 'we the people' and the establishment of a justice system. And he referred to the history of the Southern District of New York, where federal courts have been in existence since 1789."

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Calling Kaplan's appeal to the jurors "low-key" that should in no way lead to be included in an expected Trump appeal, she added it was "nonetheless out of the ordinary, reinforced the importance of the court system and its integrity in the minds of the jurors before they deliberated."

"That is a reasonable counterbalance to the chaos Trump tries to insert into judicial proceedings and was perhaps the final element of Judge Kaplan’s careful control of his courtroom, which prevented a desent into theatrics and prevented the trial from becoming just another campaign venue," she suggested.

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