The Weinstein trial took an unexpected turn today after New York Judge Curtis Farber declared a partial mistrial. The order followed a refusal of the foreperson to return to deliberations due to being bullied.
In the trial, Weinstein faced one charge of rape in the third degree and two charges of criminal sexual act in the first degree. On Wednesday, the 12-person jury found him guilty of one count of a criminal sexual act against former Project Runway assistant Miriam Haley, but not guilty of the other count of a criminal sexual act against former model Kaja Sokola.
That left the rape charge related to aspiring actress Jessica Mann. However, the jury foreperson had sent a note to the judge and said “I feel afraid inside there. I can’t be inside there.” He alleged that jurors were pressuring him to change his minds and threatened him that “Oh we will see you outside.”
Judge Farber spoke with all of the jurors and reported that “They don’t understand why the foreperson bowed out.”
What could be controversial on appeal is the decision to leave the earlier convictions when a jury proved so dysfunctional as to require this extraordinary action. While the jury agreed on the earlier counts, Weinstein’s team may argue that a broken jury to part is a broken jury to the whole.
The prosecutors indicated that they would retry on the remaining count. An effective walkout of the jury suggests a fundamentally flawed jury pool. The order only addressed the most immediate impact of the breakdown, but the defense will argue that this type of problem does not arise in a hermetically sealed fashion. It reflects jurors who were so motivated that they were allegedly willing to cross this line, according to the foreperson.
Whether this was a case of “Twelve Angry Men” or just two, the jury obviously failed to conform to the standards demanded of them under court rules and case law.
It creates a novel appellate issues in a case that has already been retried following challenges.