Judge Defends Rejecting Trump’s Request For A Mistrial In E. Jean Carroll Case
HuffPost
“The motion made no sense,” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote of his decision after the defamation trial.
A federal judge reaffirmed his rejection of a mistrial in the defamation case against former President Donald Trump after writer E. Jean Carroll was awarded $83.3 million in damages last month.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan issued a 30-page decision supporting his rejection on Wednesday, saying Trump’s legal team had no “merit” when it made the request in court.
Trump’s attorney Alina Habba had argued for a mistrial during the case last month after Carroll said she had deleted death threats she received after going public with her rape allegations against Trump. Habba took the unusual step to call for the mistrial in court in front of the jury, claiming Carroll had destroyed evidence that should have been saved.
The Associated Press notes that lawyers generally call for mistrials when the jury is not present, and Kaplan ordered the jury to discount Habba’s request at the time he dismissed it.
“The motion made no sense,” Kaplan wrote in his explanation Wednesday, adding that Habba knew Carroll had deleted some emails for more than a year before her request. “Granting a mistrial would have been entirely pointless.”
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