When Donald Trump urged the judge in his federal election subversion case to set his trial for April 2026 earlier this month, he cited a landmark Supreme Court decision concerning the infamous 1931 Scottsboro Boys cases to bolster his argument that special counsel Jack Smith isn’t giving him enough time to prepare a defense.
But moments before US District Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled the trial for March 2024 during a hearing Monday, she made her distaste for the comparison clear, taking the former president’s attorneys to task for quoting from the “profoundly different” case to try to hold off on going to trial next year.
The judge pointed out how different the facts are between a case concerning Trump’s efforts to cling to power following his 2020 election loss and one of the most high-profile race cases of the 20th century, in which nine Black youths were falsely accused of raping two White women on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama. The group were put through extremely fast trials that ended with death sentences for most of them that were all later reversed.
“Quoting the case, the defense argues that scheduling a too speedy trial is ‘not to proceed promptly in the calm spirit of regulated justice but to go forward with the haste of the mob,’” Chutkan said Monday, referring to the 1932 Supreme Court opinion in Powell v. Alabama.
“This timeline does not move the case forward with the haste of the mob,” Chutkan said. “The trial will start three years, one month, and 27 days after the events of January 6, 2021.”
The decision to reference the Supreme Court case – which required that indigent defendants receive competent counsel – in their brief also faced stinging criticism from outside the courtroom.
“It was stunningly stupid. Because one, the comparison is ridiculous. But second, if you want to alienate a judge…
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