Fox News: Judge Merchan Tells the Jury that They Do Not Need Unanimity to Convict and He Will Treat 4-4-4 as a Unanimous Verdict

FAUKLNER: “Well, let me ask you about the three choices. And — and one thing in particular that this judge said that these jurors could do. He just delivered what is being called really the pinnacle of all of this, he said that there is no need to agree on what has occurred. They can disagree on what the crime was among the three choices. Thus, this means that they could split 4-4-4 and the judge would still treat them unanimously. What does that mean?”
McCarthy: “Well, it’s really outrageous, because in a normal criminal case every statutory crime has what we call elements of the offense. Like in a bank robbery case, it’s you know, you have to rob, it’s got to be a financial institution, you have to show intent. Those are the things the jury has to agree on unanimously that were — that they were proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Here, what we’re doing is taking the element that actually makes this a felony — because remember, falsification of records is normally a misdemeanor in New York — what makes it a felony is that you’re concealing or committing another crime. And here the judge is telling them, they don’t have to agree about what the other crime is, under circumstances where that not only is what makes this a felony, what makes it a four-year potential prison penalty rather than a year or less, but it’s also what gets us into the courtroom. Because if this had been a misdemeanor, the — the time to bring this case would have lapsed in 2019. So the only reason they’re still able to bring this case is because it’s a felony, allegedly, and yet now the judge is saying, you know, you don’t have to agree on what the felony is.”