Many voters say they donā€™t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Many voters say they donā€™t want a convicted felon in the White House. But do they mean it? And can prosecutors get to trial before the vote?

Can anything stop former President Donald Trumpā€™s reelection campaign juggernaut, now that Trump has all but crushed his GOP primary opponents and pulled ahead of President Joe Biden in national polls?

While November is a long time away, and plenty could happen before then, voters do say Trump has a massive weakness: A potential criminal conviction. In poll after poll, lots of voters who shrug off Trumpā€™s four indictments say they wouldnā€™t support him if heā€™s convicted of a felony. If they mean itā€”or even if a big chunk of them doā€”they could easily be enough to keep him out of the White House.

What remains to be seen, of course, is whether they mean itā€”and, crucially, whether prosecutors can put Trump on trial in time for the rest of us to find out.

That makes prosecutorsā€™ race against the clock one of the most important narratives of the 2024 election cycle, as teams of lawyers work feverishly around the country to overcome Trumpā€™s efforts to gum up the gears of the judicial system and push the start-date of all his trials past November.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
    101Ā·
    10 months ago

    thank you for the clarification. Looking into definitions, evidently the word ā€œconvictedā€ only refers to criminal proceedings, as you say.

    • orbit@lemmy.world
      7Ā·
      10 months ago

      Yeah youā€™re right and I think weā€™re looking for civily liable instead of conviction in this scenario - not that it should make a difference.

      • EpeeGnome@lemm.eeEnglish
        2Ā·
        10 months ago

        The technicalities can get weird, but it makes a huge difference. In the US (it works differently in different legal systems) even the defendantā€™s basic constitutional rights are different between civil and criminal proceedings. For example you canā€™t plead the 5th (invoke the right to not be compelled to provide incriminating evidence against yourself) in a civil trial because your testimony couldnā€™t incriminate when the trialā€™s not criminal. Any evidence gathered this way in a civil trial is therefore inadmissible in a criminal trial about the same matters. Thatā€™s why Bill Cosby got his rape conviction overturned on appeal. A lot of the criminal case against him was based on evidence he was compelled to give when he got sued over it earlier, so it shouldnā€™t have been allowed in the criminal trial. The appeal didnā€™t find him innocent, just that the conviction had to be thrown out because the process had violated his rights.

        • orbit@lemmy.world
          2Ā·
          10 months ago

          I was referring to the perception from the results of the trial by the public, but youā€™ve given me quite a bit to mull over. Appreciate the context.