Making The Sausage

Blanche immediately goes after Steinglass's many analogies and examples and says: "This isn't a baseball game. This is extraordinarily serious."

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

B288 doesn't have an opinion of Trump, "not in this courtroom...He will be treated like anyone else, and no one is above the law." Blanche asks about her opinion outside this case, walking into this. "I didn't even know I was walking into this," she says, and Blanche laughs.

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

Blanche is now questioning the juror who's a fellow prosecutor, though in a different borough. Juror says it "boils down" to whether he can listen to the laws given by the judge. "Up to this point, [Trump's] proven innocent," he adds.

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

Now B113, who said yesterday no one is above the law, not the president, not a janitor, has the mic: "What I think about [Trump] outside this room" has no bearing...If we were sitting in a bar, I'd be happy to tell you, but in this room how I feel about Trump is not important."

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

Blanche seems satisfied, so we move onto another juror who is an attorney. He says, "I was a big fan of The Apprentice when I was watching in middle school at the time," which gets a chuckle from Trump.

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

All the jurors so far seem to be very reluctant to give their opinion of Trump, per Blanche's repeated question, saying it's not relevant in this courtroom or in this case.

"I agree with the others in separating the politics and the person," says one juror.

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

"I find him fascinating," says another juror. "He walks into a room and just sets people off." Trump smiles and chuckles to himself.

"Um, alright, thank you," Blanche says and the press laughs.

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) April 16, 2024

There's a reason they don’t show this shit in the movies. But arguably the most important parts of a trial are voir dire (jury selection), and the jury charge at the other end.  Two things you never see in movies, because it’s not dramatic.

I watched Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” last night. 3 hours of Jouaqin Phoenix giving the Corsican the emotive range and charisma of a log.🪵 How did Napoleon inspire the troops, rise through the ranks, make people like Beethoven think he was as dynamic as Byron? No idea. And how did he win so many battles? How did he lose at Waterloo? No clue. In Scott’s telling, he just did. Even the romance with Josephine seemed obscure and lifeless. Somehow this dull man inspired France, conquered the armies of Europe, inspired a love story as eponymous as Romeo and Juliet, lost an army of 540,000 in the Russian winter on the way to St. Petersburg (because the Tsar abandoned and burned Moscow? Apparently. That’s all we’re told. The disaster in the Russian winter occurs off screen). Waterloo? We know it’s coming because it’s a place on the map. Napoleon is confident, and his strategy has worked before, but this time it fails. Why? Because it did; and the movie’s entering three hour territory, time to wrap it up! Gotta exile Napoleon again, and watch him keel over (literally!) so the crawl can tell us he died as he lived: a log of a portrayal of a man. And then the crawl tells us how many troops under his command died per battle, and in total because…that’s the important thing?

If a movie can do that, how can it ever make the important nature of voir dire dramatic? It’s not really sausage making. But for all the drama we can’t squeeze out of it, it might as well be.