Being an outsider I'm particularly interested in this as my friend keeps claiming that these charges are bogus even thought they're a smart guy.
As far as I understand it's a jury trial which means it wasn't up to the judge to make the call.
As far as I understand it's a jury trial which means it wasn't up to the judge to make the call.
IANAL but I've done some jury-duty: As a general rule the judge is responsible for determining things like "which laws are involved here", and when there's a jury the judge creates instructions that cover the rest of it like: "The law says X. The question of Y is not relevant and you should not let it affect your decision. You must convict if ((A and B) or C)."
So in a jury trial the judge might rule "those aren't actually charges you can make", but not so much "that evidence is fake" or "that person is lying" etc.
My father was a nuclear reactor operator and electrician for a big chunk of his 22 years in the Navy (EM-N, E-8, worked mostly on fast attack subs). He was a manager at multiple nuclear powerplants on the East Coast before leaving that industry. He's honestly highly intelligent and curious.
He's definitely a trump fan. He thinks Biden is going to destroy the US. Dude's politics are unhinged.
One of my siblings is disabled, bi, and trans, yet both of my parents supported trump openly in 2016.
C'est la vie. It goes to show you never can tell.
But i must say, when I hear the reasons why people vote the way they do, my estimation of their intelligence drops significantly.
... But in terms of forms that are practically implementable without perfect knowledge and control of the future, there are huge risks involved with altering the amount a person's vote counts based upon some kind of gamable criteria.