Consultant lays out why lawyers on Trump jury will assure — or prevent — a guilty verdict

At 11:29 AM on Wednesday, May 29, Justice Juan Merchan asked jurors in a Lower Manhattan courthouse to begin their deliberations in Donald Trump's hush money/falsified business records trial — marking the first time in the United States' 248-year history that jurors are evaluating criminal charges against a former president.

Two of the 12 jurors now deliberating Trump's fate are attorneys, which is unusual for a criminal case. During an MSNBC appearance, jury consultant and former prosecutor Paul Callan weighed in on the effect that those attorneys could have on deliberations.

Callan told MSNBC hosts Ana Cabrera and José Díaz-Balart, "Prosecutors, for the most part, don't want lawyers on their juries. And the reason they don't want lawyers on their juries is they think that lawyers engage in hyper-analysis — that they're always looking for a technical thing that could maybe eliminate the reasonable doubt."

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The jury consultant continued, "It's surprising that there were two lawyers who were left on this case. But I have a close friend, a lawyer who served on a jury, and he said to me — this is the surprising thing that he found in the jury deliberations — (that) he got shunned by the other jurors. Because they said, 'Well, the lawyers just look for a technicality for somebody to get off. We want to know whether he committed the crime or not.' And he ended up slipping a note to a nurse who was a good friend of his on the jury — became a friend of his on the jury — and she would express his point about how technically, the reasonable doubt was present in the case. But that could happen in this case too."

Callan went on to argue that during deliberations, the non-lawyer jurors may either "shun" the two attorneys or look to them for guidance.

Callan told Cabrera and Díaz-Balart, "Everybody is saying, 'Well, they could be leaders in the deliberation.' They could be shunned by the jurors, who might say, 'No, we don't have to listen to the lawyers'…. And by the way, every group of 12 jurors — they're always different."

Callan added, "You know, lawyers — a lot of us— we like to go and talk to the jury. But when I win a case, I love to talk to them."

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