Washington
\nThe trial of former President Donald Trump in New York, which has dominated headlines in the United States and across the world, is entering its final stage after more than six weeks of proceedings.
\nOn Wednesday, jurors began the process of making a decision about whether to find Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The outcome of the trial could have major implications for the US presidential election in November and affect the future of the country for years to come.
\nNever before has a US president, past or present, faced criminal charges. Prosecutors have argued that Trump fudged the business records to conceal a hush-money payment that could have hurt his chances in the 2016 elections.
\nBut Trump and his defence team have denied any wrongdoing, instead framing the charges as politically motivated.
\nMedia coverage of the hush-money case has described the process largely by using legal terms. But it is not always easy to understand judicial jargon like \u201cindictment\u201d and \u201carraignment\u201d.
\nBelow, Al Jazeera explains 12 basic legal terms that readers may frequently come across in the news and how they apply to the Trump trial.
\nProsecutor: A government lawyer who presents a criminal case on behalf of the state
\nIn most jurisdictions in the US, the lead prosecutor \u2014 also known as the district attorney (DA) \u2014 is directly elected. A state\u2019s top prosecutor is known as the attorney general.
\nPart of a prosecutor\u2019s job is to decide whether to file charges against a suspected criminal. If the case proceeds to court, the prosecutor must then argue in favour of the charges, by presenting evidence that a crime has been committed.
\nIn the Trump trial, for instance, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg assembled a team of prosecutors to argue Trump\u2019s guilt.
\nThey include Joshua Steinglass, a veteran assistant DA who delivered a five-plus-hour closing argument on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington The trial of former President Donald Trump in New York, which has dominated headlines in the United States and across the world, is entering its final stage after more than six weeks of proceedings. On Wednesday, jurors began the process of making a decision about whether to find Trump guilty on 34 felony counts …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":65583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65585,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65562\/revisions\/65585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}