After seven weeks of legal wrangling and tawdry testimony, the first criminal trial of an American president moved to a jury of Donald J. Trump’s peers...
Mr. Trump’s fate is in the hands of those 12 New Yorkers...
The moment that deliberations began marked a transfer of power from the experts in the courtroom — the lawyers arguing the case and the judge presiding over it — to the everyday New Yorkers who forfeited weeks of their lives to assess a mountain of evidence...
The jurors...meet around a long table in an unremarkable room with unforgiving lighting and walls painted a hue best described as municipal.
...
Justice Merchan...impressed on them the gravity of their task but also said that the defendant — even a former president — is their peer.
“As a juror, you are asked to make a very important decision about another member of the community,” Justice Merchan said...
...
The jurors, seven men and five women, hail from different neighborhoods of the nation’s largest city and hold a wide variety of jobs, representing a cross-section of Manhattan. ...
