By SUDHIN THANAWALA
ATLANTA — Judge Peter Cahill hardly slept during the six weeks he presided over the murder trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd.
Cameras in the courtroom broadcast the veteran Minnesota judge’s every word to a global audience. Outside, the nation waited nervously for the outcome of a slaying that galvanized the movement for racial justice.
“When you’re in a high-profile trial, you feel the stress, you feel the pressure even if you’re not reading the papers,” he told an audience of judges last year at The National Judicial College in Reno, Nevada.
Cahill’s experience provides a glimpse of the additional scrutiny and strain that await the four judges overseeing the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump.
But the challenge facing Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee in Georgia is unlike any of the others. For one, he is the only judge so far to allow television cameras in the courtroom to broadcast hearings and any trials. He is presiding over a sprawling indictment with 19 defendants, among them other prominent figures including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. And the trials will play out in a battleground state that Trump narrowly lost in 2020.
Attorneys who have worked alongside McAfee, who took the bench just this year, say his demeanor and years of work as a prosecutor have prepared him for heightened pressure. The judge’s varied interests — he is an accomplished cellist and was a scuba diver at the Georgia Aquarium — should also provide relief from the stress of a long legal case.
But the experience of some judges who have been thrust into the public eye point to potential pitfalls and dangers ahead for the 34-year-old Georgia native. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida, who was nominated by Trump, has already faced sharp criticism for an early decision that favored the Republican former president in his…
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