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Thoughts for Trial Watchers for 2024: Part One

 


This year will be remembered for at least five very high-profile trials, each offering a window on a different part of American life.  We will discuss them all today and tomorrow. 

To be frank, there is a little bit of duplication.  Two of them are antitrust cases.  But they are very distinct examples thereof and, to reduce any sense of overlap, we will begin today with one of the antitrust matters and end tomorrow with the other. 

1. Apple v. Department of Justice

In March of this year, DoJ antitrust enforcers will make their case that Apple has imposed both hardware and software limits on their iPads and iPhones to make life difficult for competitors. The messaging service Beeper, the bluetooth tracker concern Life360 Inc, and Spotify Technology are all alleged to have been victimized by Apple's hardball.   

The defendant company hasn't had much to say about this, aside from very general assertions that it doesn't hold a monopoly in any market and there is no basis for it. I don't expect a settlement and I think Apple's attorneys will come up with something. With that I pass on to a couple of life-or-death criminal matters.... 

2. Nevada v. Telles.

This is a carry over from last January's list.  The trial date was carried over to this year due to procedural muddles.

The trial of Robert Telles, a former Nevada public official, for the murder of Jeff German. a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. German was investigating organized crime's penetration of state agencies. So the theory of motive that the prosecution will put forward is not a stretch: Telles wanted German silenced. 

One procedural issue looms large in the run-up to this trial. The prosecution wants access to German's work in progress, such as to the notes he may have been keeping on electronic devices. The Review-Journal wants to block such access, arguing that both state and federal statutes limit prosecutorial access to such material. 

How does one have a free press, they ask, if public officials can seize notes of a reporters' work in progress? One might well ask in response: how does one have a free press if public officials can get away with shooting reporters who write unfavorable pieces about them? It is all pretty much a lose-lose for the whole idea of such an institution.

3. Illinois v. Robert Crimo (pro se)

On July 4, 2022, seven people were killed by a sniper at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.

Highland Park is a suburb of Chicago on the northshore of the metro area. 

One thing that distinguishes this from every other lunatic-opens-fire criminal proceeding in the US is that Robert Crimo, the accused, plans to represent himself. He appears to argue in conspiracist style that he is a victim of a "false flag" campaign.  

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