Sacramento, CA - Recognizing that the current state budget surplus was the result of unusual federal grants during the pandemic and that next year's budget will be billions short, California governor Gavin Newsom is considering a proposal that would make betting on state criminal trials legal. Experts predict the tax income to the state from such betting would run close to $50 billion the first year, rising toward $100 billion within five years.
How would it work?Just like betting on sports games. Casinos WOULD post odds on guilt, not guilty, or hung jury and bettors would place their bets as they now do. Betting on the sentence would also be allowed, with a variety of options to entice the bettors.
Indian casinos, already in existence throughout the state but which have fallen on hard times during the pandemic, would have the exclusive right to handle betting on trials. Tribes living in remote areas, such as the Modocs in northeastern California, could open casinos in populated areas hundreds of miles away.
Critics of the plan warn that it would lead to jury tampering by big bettors, who may try to get their own agents on juries in high-profile cases in an attempt to swing the jury vote which ever way the mob has bet. Proponents, however, note that betting on sports events has not resulted in such nefarious conduct and there is no reason to assume it will happen in betting on criminal trials.
"Can you imagine the amount of tax money that would have been raised if this law had been in effect during the O. J. Simpson trial?" suggested one of the bills supporters. "That would have been the Super Bowl of jurisprudence."
As a side argument for such betting, advocates foresee defendants betting on their own trials as a means of paying their attorneys. The possibility of a defendant betting against himself is a mind-boggling reality.
