From "After a Wild Day in Court, Weinstein Jurors Will Resume Deliberations/On Wednesday, the jury convicted Harvey Weinstein of one felony sex crime. The judge sent jurors home to cool off after their discussions devolved into threats and yelling" (NYT).
UPDATE: MISTRIAL! "Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault retrial in New York ends in mistrial/The disgraced Hollywood producer was convicted Wednesday on a separate criminal sex act charge" (WaPo).
Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault retrial on a rape charge ended in a mistrial Thursday after the jury foreperson refused to return to the jury room because of threats from other jurors, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
From the Hollywood Reporter:
The jury foreperson had sent a note Wednesday afternoon asking to speak to the judge and then told the attorneys and Judge Curtis Farber: “I feel afraid inside there. I can’t be inside there.” He added that other jurors had been trying to get him to change his decision, and, when he had refused, had said “Oh we will see you outside,” and that he was concerned for his own safety....
On Monday morning, the foreperson had also asked to speak to the judge and said that jurors were considering elements from Weinstein’s past that weren’t being used as evidence in the trial and weren’t part of the charged crimes.
Another juror, who was juror No. 7 on this case and the youngest on the jury, had asked to address the court twice Friday, first saying he had heard jurors discussing another juror in the courtroom elevators, and then asking to be excused from the jury as he did not feel the process was “fair,” while staring at the defense table.
“If you’re a deliberating juror you have to be punched in the face in order for it to rise to the level of a real threat,” Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala said Thursday, while urging the judge to call for mistrial before the juror entered. “It’s insane in the membrane, insane on the brain.”
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23 comments:
Weinstein appears to be a terrible man. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine the “unwoke” getting justice in New York. OTOH , it appears NYC will elect a homicidal sexual harasser as its next mayor.
Not fair, Harvey? Not Fair ? Duly noted.
the new york times that suppressed sharon waxman's reporting backing in 2004, because well clooney and damon were on a role at the time,
…amazes me he’s actually in ‘jail’ somewhere. I expected him to be made whole by now…
The play is to Keep Weinstein in the news long enough to get Trump’s attention. The fact that Weinstein was a generous Democrat donor is not relevant to Trump world. Mark my words, Trump may pardon despicable Weinstein on his way out the White House doors.
Can this scumbag just die already?
Avoid women.
...the jury foreperson refused to return to the jury room because of threats from other jurors.
The Hollywood Reporter neglects to stipulate why the foreman (yes foreman, HP, "foreperson" is bullshit on stilts) was threatened. Such threats amount to jury tampering, and it would be instructive to know if that tampering, if it occured, was intended to benefit Weinstein or one or more accusers. I hope LE doesn't refrain from investigating the foreman's claim. Juries can be effectively tampered with in several ways, including a false claim of threats.
Is a mistrial on all the charges or just the one left? Given the situation it seems to me the one charge they did agree on also has to be tossed into the mistrial box since it rationally can't stand alone. Of course, rationality has nothing to do with it since it is law.
I think it reasonable to conclude the holdouts, a minority of one maybe, is for acquittal on the other charges given we know the jury has convicted on one of the charges already.
Looks to me like someone is interfering with this process.
There is no way a conviction is upheld on appeal when a juror claims they were threatened by other jurors.
We are quickly approaching a point if no longer far past the point when a critical mass of the population thinks our justice system is corrupt and broken.
…he walks…somehow. Part of the protected class he is…
I'm still not planning any trips to New York. Nobody is looking good at this trial.
Do updates count as an additional post? Are you losing out on due credit?
If our jury system is going to survive then there needs to be an investigation into the accusations of coercion and threats.
If the accusations are found credible then the jurors who are guilty of this need to be made an example of. They need to go to jail. You just cannot have this.
3 charges, 1 per victim. Acquittal on one, conviction on one, mistrial on third. Assuming prosecution will not seek to retry since he is already serving time and elderly in poor health. Grounds for appeal remain to be seen. He succeeded once before.
A jury consists of twelve good men and true. I think that's how Sir William Blackstone phrased it. It seems to me that the probity and intellectual competence of the veniremen is sorely lacking in NYC and much of the rest of Blue America.
According to Google AI, New York pays $75 per day for jury duty. Obviously that's not enough to attract or justly compensate the good and the true.
it appears NYC will elect a homicidal sexual harasser as its next mayor.
Which one?
I was on several criminal, single-day juries in 1991. Discovered I argue like my father--a bit heatedly. We were told not to let an undercover cop's testimony in a previous trial about his assault by crack dealers influence our deliberations on a drug sale case. Almost immediately, a middle-aged woman said she didn't like his arrogance from the other trial, so I let her have it. Interesting experience I'd rather not repeat.
Well, gotta say, I never expected Harvey to get off because of a weenie, of all things.
How did the jurors "cool off"?
Did Harvey take a shower and let them watch?
The older I get, the less I trust our "justice" system.
I served on a grand jury, once, and, in retrospect, I believe we were all manipulated into approving a list of "true bills." All of us on the jury were neophytes, save one. That person was picked, by the judge to be foreman. He knew exactly what he was doing.
12 Angry Membranes
Sort of a side note:
I wonder why Harvey W's side did not depose, even call as witnesses, all those Hollywood types that lauded Harvey and introduced starlets to him when all evidence shows they knew.
Could celebrities, in essence, saying this was no big deal, have helped sway the jurry?
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