srothstein wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 11:11 pm
powerboatr wrote: ↑Fri Mar 31, 2023 2:10 pm
well he is to be arrainged on tuesday on charges that are still unreleased even to the plantiff
how can you be told to turn yourself in for booking on charges that you have not been made formally aware of? maybe i stated that wrong.
but if the indictments are still sealed...how can one be expected to turn yourself in on charges that you have not seen, so at the hearing you have legal representation to argue the merits of the charge or NON merits of the charge?
news says he will be formally read the indictment on tuesday at his arraignment hearing
i am very confused ...could just be my ignorance of law??
This is a misunderstanding of the way the court process works. It is caused, at least in part, by most of us learning our law from TV and not getting a real education in the process. Of course, the hope is that you will never really need to understand this process fully anyway.
In general, when a grand jury returns an indictment it is a public record. In small towns, the newspaper runs a list of the indictments (people and charges) each session of the grand jury. Most people find out the charges when they are arrested on the warrants that are automatically generated when the indictment is returned. Many people who already know about the charges (arrested and released on bond pending the indictment) get to arrange to turn themselves in to see the magistrate instead of being arrested.
An indictment can be kept sealed when there is some valid reason to not let people know about it. This could be they think the suspect would flee if he knew, or that some evidence could be destroyed, or that there are non-indicted co-conspirators that could be scared off. In this case, my gut feeling says this is why the indictment was sealed. But to arrest the first suspect, they have to unseal at least parts of the indictment because he has the right to be informed of the charges against him.
But the arraignment (or magistration as we call it) is a hearing where the suspect is told of the charges against him, read his rights to make sure he understands them, and enters his plea. The judge will then set the terms of the bail. BTW, the SCOTUS says this is the first adversarial court hearing and that you have the right to have a lawyer represent you at the arraignment )and the state must pay for it if you cannot afford it).
What I have been looking at is a real potential flaw in the procedure. If a person is indicted in one state, and is arrested in another state, he has to be extradited between the states. If someone were to arrest Trump in Florida, DeSantis has already said that Florida would not extradite him. What would Bragg do then? If Trump refused to turn him self in, would there be a warrant in the system for him? The originating state has to say if they will come pick him up from the extradition. If the originating state said no, he gets let go in his home state again. In every state Trump goes to, he could do the same thing. Let them arrest him and be cooperative with them, but not waive his extradition and make NY agree to come get him. Obviously he would need to avoid New York, but no one with any taste wants to go there anyway. It would be a fun way to campaign anyway.
My last thought on this is that it is going to backfire badly on the Democrats. It will drive more people to support Trump because of the harassment. That will help him win the whole thing. I know they are trying to help him get the nomination because they think he will be easier to defeat in the main event. If they are right, then they already have plans to steal the next election also. And that WILL touch off the revolution, IMO. It means they are plotting to destroy this country (if there was any doubt of that, we have the timeline now).
