Trump ripped the jury selection process in his historic New York criminal trial yesterday, the day after the first seven jurors were selected out of a pool of almost 100 people.
Posting about the hush money trial on its scheduled off-day, Trump — who has repeatedly accused the judge in the case of being biased against him — suggested incorrectly that he should be entitled to unlimited strikes of potential jurors in his criminal case.
“I thought STRIKES were supposed to be ‘unlimited’ when we were picking our jury? I was then told we only had 10, not nearly enough when we were purposely given the 2nd Worst Venue in the Country,” he wrote on Truth Social before he decried the criminal cases against him as “election interference” and part of a “witch hunt.”
Under New York law, each side does have an unlimited number of strikes “for cause,” but Merchan, the judge presiding over the case, can decide whether or not that cause is worthy of a strike.
The two sides are also entitled to a limited number of “peremptory strikes” — potential jurors they can dismiss. Because Trump is charged with a Class E felony, which is a lower-level felony, he and prosecutors are entitled to 10 peremptory challenges each. (The number goes up to 20 for defendants facing the highest level of felony charge, Class A.)
While Merchan has dismissed scores of potential jurors who said they could not be impartial or had scheduling conflicts, he has dismissed only two for cause in the two days since jury selection began. One was a person who had written “lock him up” of Trump in a 2017 social media post. Merchan denied some other Trump cause dismissal requests, including one for a woman who had posted on Facebook about celebrating Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
Trump’s attorney Todd Blanche then used one of his peremptory challenges to remove the woman.