To the Editor:

Re “McConnell Plans for Senate Trial on a Speedy Pace” (front page, Jan. 21):

In the Federalist Papers No. 65, Alexander Hamilton, talking about the reasoning behind giving the Senate the power to try impeachments, wrote: “Where else than in the Senate could have been found a tribunal sufficiently dignified, or sufficiently independent? What other body would be likely to feel confidence enough in its own situation, to preserve, unawed and uninfluenced, the necessary impartiality between an individual accused, and the representatives of the people, his accusers?”

Stirring words, but Hamilton clearly did not foresee a situation in which the majority leader of the Senate, far from being independent, declared that he would take his lead from the president and that he was not impartial, despite having to take an oath that requires impartiality, and several of his fellow senators have expressed similar views. Dignity? Impartiality? Independence? Not this Senate.

John T. Dillon

West Caldwell, N.J.

To the Editor:

Because Chief Justice John Roberts has Supreme Court responsibilities in the morning and cannot begin his impeachment duties until 1 p.m., Mitch McConnell’s compressed trial schedule would result in a trial that would go, with breaks, well beyond 1 a.m. Doesn’t this amount to forced sleep deprivation for the jurors, not to mention the chief justice?

What’s more, how can jurors be expected to process information efficiently and think rationally over a span of 12 hours extending beyond bedtime? Or is rational thought no longer considered necessary in trials?