Opinion: Senators at Trump’s impeachment trial aren't impartial ‘jurors.' But they shouldn't be partisan hacks either (via latimesopinion)
, who chairs the Standing Committee of Correspondents, objected among other things to a proposal that reporters be confined to “pens” preventing them from “freely accessing senators as they come to and from the chamber.”, joined by 57 news organizations, sent a letter to the Senate on Thursday night asking it to reconsider the restrictions.
Whatever else this controversy demonstrates, it undermines the notion that senators are “jurors.” Not many reporters would try to interview actual jurors during the progress of, say, a sensational murder trial, and the jurors would be under orders not to talk to them.for reporters prepared by the District of Columbia Courts: “Courts generally do not prohibit the press from talking to jurors after the trial ends.
It’s not only in their ability to speak to reporters that senators differ from jurors in a criminal trial. Prospective jurors can be disqualified if they have connections with the defendant. Obviously this rule can’t be applied to an impeachment trial, in which many of the senators will be political allies or opponents of the president.
wrote that “it cannot have been the intention of the Framers that this rule applies in impeachments, for its application would be absurd.”Not at all. Black wrote: “In voting on each article of impeachment, each senator, acting in a capacity combining those of judge and jury, is registering his best judgment ‘on the facts’ and ‘on the laws.
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