The stars of the 'Judge Judy' spinoff talk about Hollywood's biggest legal dramas of the year.
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What are your thoughts on Jonathan Majors’ conviction?
Michael Corriero: I thought the verdict is a clear example of the jury’s role as sacrosanct. There was an incredible amount of publicity from both sides on what happened and what didn’t. The jury was able to cut through all of that and made some very crucial distinctions. For example, he was charged with intentional assault as the top count — intending to cause a physical injury of his accuser — and was found guilty of reckless assault, meaning that the jury felt that whatever he did it was not intended to cause a physical injury. The jury really took the time to cut through both the prosecution’s theory and defense theory to come up with a solution which they felt was fair just under the circumstances.
Juarez: I agree with Michael. The jury really looked carefully at the charges and the evidence and carefully decided that the evidence matched one of the charges but not the others.
Text messages from a previous alleged incident were shown to the jury and it seemed that Mr. Majors’ attorney opened the door to that on cross-examination. What are your thoughts on what happened there, and what impact do you think those texts had on the jury?
Tewolde: I think she opened the door, if I’m not mistaken, when she was cross-examining the accuser and was really pressing her on her vague answers to law enforcement. “Well, didn’t you say this, but then you meant this or why did you not say this?” And the judge allowed the prosecution to provide more context for the jury as to why she was so vague. That’s when the older text message came through about her not wanting to really tell the truth.
Corriero: Probably the worst thing a losing criminal defense lawyer would want to hear — and I was a criminal defense lawyer for seven years before I became a judge and after I left the prosecutor’s office — is that you opened the door to incriminating evidence. So, I’m not going there because this question of the parameters of cross-examination goes directly to the skill level of an experienced trial lawyer. Sometimes we walk a razor’s edge in cross-examination. This is a very delicate area, and I don’t know how it played out. I wouldn’t be comfortable in saying that she opened the door. It may very well have been part of her strategy to get it all out there.
Juarez: I know the big takeaway was he was convicted on two of the counts, but he was also exonerated on two of the accounts. That would suggest that these text messages didn’t sow anger and offend the jury [to the extent that] they just threw the book at him. So, again, it’s kind of hard to know if this opening the door type situation was deliberate. Did she know that these would probably come in but felt that the trade-off on cross-examination was worth it? Or perhaps it wasn’t part of a broader strategy because the defense wasn’t entirely unsuccessful. We can’t ignore that.
