Dear Reader, 

There’s nothing quite as excruciating as waiting for a jury to return a verdict in a criminal case. 

After seven weeks of trial in the false business records case against Donald Trump in Manhattan, the case is now in the hands of the eight men and four women selected as jurors. At last, after sitting through witness testimony in poker-faced silence, jurors may finally discuss the case with each other in their private deliberations. 

When I served as a prosecutor, I experienced the agonizing wait for juries to render their verdicts. It would seem like an eternity as we waited for the jury to make its decision, sometimes after a long and arduous trial. Certainly, the anxiety prosecutors experience is nothing compared to that of a defendant, whose very liberty is at stake. For the accused, jury deliberations may even be a matter of life and death. Both parties and their lawyers pour all of themselves into the trial, all building toward the moment when the jury renders its verdict.