Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
The jury would have been instructed very precisely on the elements of the crime as charged. It would not have been up to them to decide if it could be a crime or not, only if as a factual matter the government had proved each element. In other words, that's not a judgment for the jury, they are told what the law is. Any argument that it couldn't be a crime would have been raised by Mastro in motion practice, presumably.
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You make it sound like the judge is going to say something along the lines of "If you believe Billy Boy trimmed and later sold a baseball card, then you must convict him of this charge."
Here's an example of a set of jury instructions from a NY court corresponding to a criminal simulation case. The phrasing of these instructions creates multiple significant hurdles that you'd need to successfully argue your way through in order to get a conviction even on something like the Wagner case with Mastro. And it would be significantly more difficult (perhaps nearly impossible) to get a jury to convict someone of criminal simulation for something as benign as selling a cleaned baseball card.
11-27-2024, 02:02 AM
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