Analysis | For Donald Trump’s false records conviction, prison is rare but not unprecedented
- Donald Trump is the first former US president convicted of a crime after hush money trial guilty verdict
- Trump faces as many as four years in prison when he is sentenced by Justice Juan Merchan on July 11
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New York jury finds Donald Trump guilty on all counts in hush money trial
Now that the jury in Donald Trump’s criminal trial has made the historic decision to convict him, the judge overseeing the case will soon face a monumental choice: whether to sentence the 2024 Republican presidential candidate to time behind bars.
Prison time is rare for people convicted in New York state of felony falsification of business records, the charge Trump, a businessman-turned-politician, faced at his six-week trial.
But legal experts said precedent can only be so helpful in guiding Merchan’s decision on the appropriate sentence in the first criminal trial of a US president past or present.
“Typically this is not the kind of case where you would expect a first-time white-collar offender to receive a sentence of incarceration,” said New York defence lawyer Andrew Weinstein, who in 2009 represented a man sentenced to three years’ conditional discharge after pleading guilty to falsifying business records as part of a cheque-cashing scheme.
“But everything about Trump is different, so I don’t think you can look historically at other sentences because he’s just a different animal,” Weinstein said.