May 9-15, 2024

Courtrooms are curious inventions. Architecturally spare, sterile, and square, courtrooms create a hushed, almost reverential response from visitors, reinforced by bailiffs and sheriffs’ deputies should something trigger a lapse in expected demeanor. Favorite set pieces for movies and television — the balcony in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” the steamy and crowded trial in “Inherit the Wind,” the muraled courtroom for “Law and Order” come to mind — courtrooms are a fundamental component of governance, reflecting both the rule of law and respect for the law, basic tenets of our American democracy.

In reality, a courtroom is just a space — until populated with the judge, the prosecution, and defense, the defendant, the jury, witnesses, bailiffs, and visitors. It may be a set piece, but it comes alive for the human drama, whether a trial with infamous defendants, civil suit, traffic infraction, or adoption. Much of daily courtroom action doesn’t supply fodder for tabloid journalism, merely settlement of legal transgressions and neglected responsibilities that attracts few reporters.

The Manhattan courtroom that Donald Trump complains is badly lit, too cold, and too old, has hosted many decades of trials, but none so scandalous as the criminal “hush money” business fraud trial of the former president. Although only the trial transcripts and sketches are available, not the actual back-and-forth interrogation of witnesses, new terms — catch and kill, checkbook journalism — are riveting. The courtroom may be cleaned every evening, but no janitorial service can remove the slimy “ickiness” of the testimony offered up during the day. One wants to find the moral compass that is intended to guide people, but apparently is missing in the rarified world of the defendant and his friends.

The bottom line, of course, is the rule of law. Watching this trial play out is different than a scripted television show, where the writer already knows how the jury will decide, even if the audience doesn’t. The democratic process is at work. It’s not a popularity contest and it’s not entertainment. Hundreds of years, precedents, trials and appeals have led to this point, and whatever verdict the jury hands down will be based on the law. What happens after that will depend on respect for the legal process. A “guilty” verdict certainly would be appealed, dragging out the sorry spectacle for months or years, but absolutely a prerogative of the defendant in American jurisprudence. A “not guilty” verdict is not the same as “innocent” but most likely would be trumpeted as such by the former president and his supporters.

What is ironic is that Mr. Trump loudly complains that the legal process is not fair, that his constitutional rights have been taken away from him. He should re-read the U.S. Constitution, maybe not the one reprinted in his $59.99 Bible, but the one that states, in Article III, Section 2, “The trial of all crimes, except in cases of Impeachment, shall be by jury; and such trial shall be held in the State where said crimes shall have been committed…” Those rights are further refined by Amendments V, VI, and VII, rights he swore to uphold in the Oath of Office he took on January 20, 2017. In an American courtroom, those rights are not for a few, not for some, but for everyone, including himself. God bless America!