Something is off about the Manafort deliberations....

[yallerdawg]

22. You can read about the case, you know.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/8/19/17752532/paul-manafort-jury-decision-judge-ellis

Laura Appleman

First, I would note that two days of deliberations isn’t really that long. I think that the American public has an unrealistic expectation, from all the depictions of criminal justice we get in the media, particularly television and movies, that every criminal adjudication, no matter how complex, can be decided in a short period of time. With something like the Manafort trial, which involves 18 counts related to tax fraud, bank fraud, money laundering, failure to register as a foreign agent, and obstruction of justice, it is likely taking the jury some time just to sort through the counts alone — 18 charges are a lot to bring to trial, and the jury must decide guilt or innocence on all 18.

In addition, the charges against Manafort are extremely complex; fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice all are complicated issues, even for experts. The jury must consider paper trails, international financial transactions, and reams of documents — this is not an open-and-shut case. Moreover, the jury pool is not comprised of experts in international finance, so it makes sense that the deliberations are a slow, painstaking process.

Seth Abramson

Because this is a “paper case” with a number of charges, complicated financial records, and a lay jury not selected for its understanding of international financial transactions, we would expect a medium-length to long deliberation process — at least a couple days — simply for the jurors to work through all the evidence and discuss each charge separately.

Quick verdicts are not generally associated with lengthy, document-heavy white-collar prosecutions. And if any or all of the jurors have a sense of the public interest in this case, they are likely to be even more careful and deliberative in their review of the evidence than usual.