Decide Curtis Farber declared a mistrial on the remaining rape cost in Harvey Weinstein’s intercourse crimes retrial in New York on Thursday, June twelfth after the jury foreperson refused to return to the jury deliberation room.
This dramatic conclusion got here at some point after the jury issued a cut up verdict on Wednesday, June eleventh. They discovered the disgraced Hollywood producer responsible of a first-degree legal intercourse act cost in opposition to Miriam Haley, however acquitted him of the same cost involving Kaja Sokola.
The jury had been despatched dwelling early on Wednesday amid tensions and was scheduled to renew deliberations on a third-degree rape cost involving Jessica Mann.
“I really feel afraid inside there. I can’t be inside there,” the foreperson wrote in a be aware to Farber, including that different jurors had been pressuring him to alter his choice.
When requested to return to the jury room on Thursday, he refused. merely responding, “No, I’m sorry.”
The mistrial adopted a request from Weinstein himself, who addressed the court docket on Wednesday. “That is my life that’s on the road,” he stated, pleading for a mistrial. “I’m not getting a good trial.”
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This retrial was essential as a result of the New York Courtroom of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 202 conviction in April 2024, throwing out a 23-year jail sentence from that case. The court docket discovered that the preliminary trial decide made improper rulings, together with permitting testimony from ladies whose allegations weren’t a part of the fees, which prejudiced the jury.
The result of this New York retrial doesn’t influence Weinstein’s separate 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles, for which he is at the moment serving a 16-year sentence.
