April 09, 2026|Press
By Andy Gensler
“A mistrial is an extreme remedy that is difficult to get,” said Lauren Spahn, a partner in Buchalter’s Nashville office with a background in entertainment law and specializing in live. “The judge put a few safeguards in place. Ultimately, the states filed for the mistrial. The judge then had this cooling off period and basically helped to provide mechanisms that would take away certain prejudices that could harm the states. They gave them additional time to get ready for trial and to prepare the witnesses. They did certain things with the jury and instructed them on what they can and can’t do to ensure that they didn’t have prejudice and that they were not observing outside outlets reporting on this. The judge essentially came in to cure the chaos, to help set it up the grounds for a mistrial to be even more difficult to reach that higher burden.”
Spahn, again, doesn’t believe these issues rise to the level of a mistrial. “My assessment is still pretty much the same,” she wrote in an email, “as it seems there are sufficient corrective measures the court has taken and could take in these two witness issues to avoid a mistrial. Since a final verdict has not been reached, the corrective measures would most likely remedy any material or prejudicial impact caused by these issues. Judge Subramanian seems to be set on continuing this trial.”
“Let’s say that the states win,” Spahn said, “they’re going to claim that there was prejudice with the jury, the confusion from the federal trial with the settlement, with the time in between there were more opportunities that the jury could gain information from outside sources. They may be confused about the process. Now they’re looking at different requirements of the law. Before there were federal charges and elements that had to be met, and now you have different state laws that have different elements. There’s confusion because it’s two different sets of rules and instructions that they’re given, which could cause issues with the jury.
“If you’re looking at the State side,” Spahn continued, “they might say they were prejudiced from the beginning. This was settled and then it put them in this position where they had to quickly get up to speed. They could argue the same kind of prejudice and issues with the jury as well.”
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