What kind of sentence could former President Donald J. Trump face?

It’s one of the big questions now that Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican Party presidential nominee, stands convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in his efforts to quash mid-campaign stories about sexual trysts.

In the hour following the verdict, experts seem split on whether Trump will face jail time as punishment.

But they almost agree that facing jail time and actually doing it are completely different things.

Hardly anyone sees Trump serving his hush money sentence — whatever it is — before voters decide on his political future in November. That’s based on the strong likelihood Justice Juan M. Merchan would release Trump on bail pending the completion of appeals, which are expected to run well into 2025.

For now, Trump’s sentencing is tentatively scheduled for July 11.

That will follow completion of a pre-sentence investigation and a process in which both prosecutors and defense will get to put forth their own recommendations for appropriate punishment to Merchan. But the judge makes the call.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg didn’t immediately weigh in on whether he will ask the judge for a prison sentence during a Thursday evening press conference, according to CBS News, saying his team will speak instead in court filings.

Unlike in Pennsylvania, where judges start with a sentencing matrix designed to fit the particulars of the case before them — including the defendant’s prior record and a score assigned to the gravity of the offense — and judges must clearly explain variations up or down from those guidelines, New York judges have a little more discretion at the start of the process.

The statutory maximum term for New York’s falsifying business records charge is one and one-third years to four years in prison. But Merchan could also assign a definite prison sentence of up to one year, or a wide variety of non-incarceration sentences, ranging from probation to community service or a fine.

Some doubt Trump will ever face prison time.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a sentence of incarceration. I’d be very surprised,” said Cheryl Bader, a Fordham University law professor said Thursday.

Bader said that’s based in part on the circumstances of Trump’s particular case.

He has no prior felony convictions on his record, she noted, and the falsifying business records charges are graded as Class E felonies, or the lowest category of felony in New York State.

And then there’s the fact that Trump is 77 years old.

Not to mention the logistical difficulty of jailing a former president who is entitled to a Secret Service detail.

The one wildcard, Bader said, is the idea that Merchan would want to somehow hold Trump to a higher standard because he is a former president. But that would be out of character, she said, for how the judge has attempted to run the trial so far — which is to say he seems to have gone out of his way to keep things normal.

“I think the judge has done a very good job of staying within what are the normal criminal procedures and process, and that under a lot of scrutiny and pressure,” she said.

Trump was found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records related to the coverup of a $130,000 hush money payment that was made to the porn star Stormy Daniels in the days leading up to the 2016 election.

New York state data shows that while incarceration for the business records charge is not common, it is not unheard of:

According to New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, of 48 cases statewide in which the business records count was the top charge for a felony or misdemeanor conviction in 2022, just 15 of those defendants — fewer than one in three — were sentenced to jail or prison. (2022 is the last full year for which data was available.)

Of two felony and misdemeanor falsifying business records convictions won in New York City that year, neither defendant received new prison time at sentencing.

In all other cases, the defendants received a time-served sentence — meaning they weren’t ordered to serve any more time than they already had since their arrest, not applicable in Trump’s case; probation, fine or some other type of release.

In 2021, only 19 of 71 such defendants statewide got incarceration terms.

But all cases are different, and one legal expert commenting on CNN Thursday had a different take about Trump’s possible fate.

Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former chief deputy in Manhattan district attorney’s office, said there are reasons Trump could find himself in the minority of cases where a low-level felony conviction brings jail because of some specific aspects of this case:

• He has three other criminal cases pending in three other juridictions;
• His personality may prevent him from showing any remorse, and;
• He’s already been fined 10 times by Merchan in this case for violating certain gag orders.

Given those factors, Agnifilo said, a generic defendant “would absolutely fall within that 10 to 30 percent (of defendants) who would be sentenced to prison. Because his name is Donald Trump, who knows what will happen.

“But those are the exact factors that any judge in New York State would take into consideration.”