A federal judge denied a spur-of-the-moment request Monday for separate trials for former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) and his wife.
The Washington Post reported that Maureen McDonnell’s defense attorney, William Burck, argued after the court returned from lunch that evidence given in testimony solicited by the governor’s attorneys would prove unhelpful to the first lady on the charge that she obstructed justice.
Before the court broke for lunch, a former cabinet member close to the governor testified that Maureen McDonnell was “very difficult, very demanding, very diva-ish.”
U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer denied the motion without offering any reasoning for his decision. Spencer had also denied a request to grant separate trials to the couple last summer.
From what I have heard of this defense they have got NOTHING. All they do is try and muddy the waters. Since none of their mud seems to be sticking they try and change tactics.
And people say Bobby and Mo had marriage problems before…you know Guvnah Vaginal Probe approved this move.
Shouldn’t this give her pretty decent grounds on which to ask for an appeal should she be convicted? It seems their attorneys are pretty much blaming her for everything and making her out to be a spoiled rotten, power hungry, Imelda Marcos type.
That would be “forced error.” Not grounds for an appeal. The defense can’t eff things up on purpose and then ask for a new trial.
Criminal law attorneys call this “cutthroat”. It’s really the worst variation on the Prisoner’s Dilemma (see google). The 2 can choose to cooperate on a common defense, but that only happens IF both agree there’s a non-trivial chance that it’ll work. Example 1: if there’s reason to think that the 2 joining forces to argue no crime at all was committed might work. Example 2: if there’s room in the evidence to argue there’s reasonable doubt as to whether EITHER person charged committed the crime, as maybe some third party did it. Problems here: 1. there’s no doubt, or at least both sets of defending attorneys believe there’s no doubt, a crime was committed, and 2. there’s no third party to point to (The kids? Political enemies? Not on this evidence.)
There’s a line of judicial authority called “conflicting defenses” that, in some cases, allows room to argue that the two persons ought to be tried separately. But there’s no such conflicting defense situation here: instead, the governor’s team is pointing to the wife, and the wife’s team is pointing to the governor. So, it’s like putting a spider and bee in a glass jar, or tying together two rodents: there’s nowhere else to go, no one else to attack, but the other person. And things get very very bloody, and very often - criminal attorneys will tell ALMOST ALWAYS - both lose.