Long before Donald Trump’s hush-money trial concluded, I predicted that his conviction was a forgone conclusion — despite the obvious weakness of the case against him.

Had the prosecution been brought in another part of the country, or even in another part of New York State, which was more fairly balanced with anti and pro-Trump voters, I am in little doubt that the outcome would have been different. (RELATED: ALAN DERSHOWITZ: I Was Inside The Court When The Judge Closed Trump’s Trial — What I Saw Shocked Me)

But instead, on Thursday, Trump became the first former president to be found guilty of a crime – convicted on all 34 flimsy counts of “falsifying business records.”

Why? Because this case was tried in Manhattan, where practically every man on the street wants to keep one Donald Trump out of the White House.

Perhaps the most important function of an independent jury in criminal trials is to keep a check on the biases of prosecutors and judges.

But for this constitutional protection to work, jurors must not be biased themselves against........

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