Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan has delayed the sentencing date for the former president's hush money conviction to September 18th, which is well after the July 15-18 Republican National Convention.
The decision comes in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity. Trump, who denies any wrongdoing, had previously been scheduled to face sentencing July 11.
"I think the Supreme Court rightly has struck a return to the rule of law in our nation, particularly as applies to a former president of the United States and the sitting president of the United States of America," responds Abraham Hamilton III, general counsel and public policy analyst for the American Family Association.
Last week, Trump's legal team filed a letter seeking to challenge his felony conviction of falsifying business records, and Hamilton says they can also turn to the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling in Ramos v. Louisiana, which outlawed split-jury verdicts for people accused of serious crimes.
"Judge Merchan instructed the jury that the secondary felony -- not the instant one that got into court, but the secondary charge that made the misdemeanor case a felony -- the jury had an opportunity to choose between a separate set of alleged criminal actions to determine whether or not a felony was convicted," Hamilton explains.
On this point, he says, the Supreme Court has ruled that a jury cannot conclude on distinct, separate bases that a person is unanimously guilty of one crime if the jury has not come to an agreement as to what that crime is.
Editor's Note: The American Family Association is the parent organization of the American Family News Network, which operates AFN.net.
