Jonah Bromwich
May 30, 2024, 10:03 a.m. ET

Jonah Bromwich Reporting from inside the courthouse

The jury specifically asked in its note for the judge to repeat his instructions on what are called “evidentiary inferences” — that is, reasonable inferences that can be drawn from what they heard at trial. They asked to hear the following analogy, which he provided yesterday and just repeated:

“Suppose you go to bed one night when it is not raining and when you wake up in the morning, you look out your window; you do not see rain, but you see that the street and sidewalk are wet, and that people are wearing raincoats and carrying umbrellas. Under those circumstances, it may be reasonable to infer, that is conclude, that it rained during the night.”

That's in the jury instructions? That is a uber-common example that criminal trial lawyers in Florida, who are allowed to talk about the law with jurors, use. There is a surprising, to me, degree of hand-craftedness in Merchan's instructions. New York has "standard" jury instructions to make sure judges keep it uniform. Merchan seems to have tailored these instructions, with the input of the lawyers, to this case. That gives me pause.