Harvey Weinstein’s new trial ended abruptly on Thursday when the jury’s foreman refused to join the deliberations about the remaining violation position against the dishonorous magnate of the film.
The Judge of the State of New York Curtis Farber declared a null trial and the prosecutors promised to try Weinstein again for the position in which the jury had been blocked, the position of rape in third degree that accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting the former actor Jessica Mann.
The dramatic end occurred one day after the jury announced that he had unanimously found Weinstein guilty of sexually assaulting a woman and not guilty of assaulting another more than a decade ago. The verdicts in the other two counts are found.
After the partial verdict was announced on Wednesday, Mann issued a statement saying: “I would never lie about rape or use something so traumatic to hurt someone.”
“I didn’t talk to ruin his life,” Mann said about Weinstein. “He did that. I talked because mine matters.”
Weinstein met again after the State Appeals Court revoked his emblematic 2020 sentence for sexually abusing women.
That essay defined the #MeToo movement and helped make Weinstein, the former Miramax chief winner of the Oscar, into a couple. But the Court of Appeals determined that the judge in that trial had incorrectly allowed the testimony against Weinstein based on accusations that were not part of the case.
Even so, much of the evidence that turned out that Weinstein was convicted five years ago for the third grade violation of a woman and a first -degree criminal sexual act against another woman was reintroduced in her judgment.
Like before, Weinstein declared himself innocent of a third degree violation position based on Mann complaints, and a first -degree criminal sexual act position presented by the former production assistant of “Runway Project” Miriam Haley.
But this time, Weinstein faced an additional position of criminal sexual act in the first degree in the alleged sexual assault of a former Polish model called Kaja Sokola.
Weinstein, 73, denied all the positions and his lawyers insisted that the sexual encounters with their three accusers were “transactional” and “consensual” and accused the three women of being loud.
During the five days of deliberations, the jury’s foreman had informed Farber that they were having difficulty reaching a verdict about the position of Mann and that several members had collided.
Just before the partial verdict was revealed on Wednesday, the foreman told the court that he had been threatened by another member of the panel that said: “You know me; you will see me outside.”
“I feel scared there,” the jury told Farber, according to a transcription of the conversation provided by the State Court. “I can’t be inside there.”
Farber told the lawyers that he would ask the jury if they had reached a verdict about some of the counts and that he would instruct the jury to continue deliberating in the other position.
Weinstein’s defense lawyer, Arthur Aidala, immediately opposed.
“You have an adult man who has now said that people have told him in the jury room that will meet him outside,” said Aidala. “He said twice.”
But Farber said that what the jury was describing was simply “nonsense of the school.”
At that time, Weinstein made a last minute plea for a null trial, saying: “This is not suitable for me, the person who is in trial here.”
Farber advanced with his decision and minutes later, the jurors returned to the courtroom and issued a partial verdict.
Weinstein was convicted of criminal sexual act for the 2006 attack against Haley. But he was declared not guilty of a second criminal sexual act derived from the accusations brought Sokola, who told the court that he also attacked it in 2006.
