Weinstein jury indicates it is split on some counts
NEW YORK – The jury in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial indicated Friday that it is deadlocked on the most serious charges, but the judge told the panel it must keep working.
In a note to the judge late in the fourth day of deliberations, jurors asked if it was permissible for them to be hung on one or both counts of predatory sexual assault while reaching a unanimous verdict on the other charges on their complicated verdict sheet.
Weinstein’s lawyers said they would accept a partial verdict, but prosecutors said no and Judge James Burke refused to allow it. He sent jurors back to deliberate for a few more minutes before letting them go home for the weekend. They’ll resume Monday.
“Just remember you are in a critical stage, you are in the process of deliberations and you are not sequestered,” Burke told the panel of seven men and five women.
The jury has been particularly focused on the key aspect of the predatory sexual assault counts that Weinstein is facing: “Sopranos” actress Annabella Sciorra’s testimony that Weinstein raped and forcibly performed oral sex on her in the mid-1990s.
In all, Weinstein, 67, is charged with five counts stemming from the allegations of two other women – an aspiring actress who says he raped her in March 2013 and a former film and TV production assistant, Mimi Haleyi, who says he forcibly performed oral sex on her in March 2006.
But to convict Weinstein of a predatory sexual assault charge, jurors must agree on two things: that Weinstein sexually assaulted Sciorra in some way and that he committed one of the other charged offenses. The predatory sexual assault charge requires prosecutors to show that a defendant committed a prior rape or other sex crime, but doesn’t have the statue of limitation constraints that would bar Sciorra’s allegations from consideration on their own.
Weinstein has maintained any sexual encounters were consensual.
The Associated Press has a policy of not publishing the names of people who allege sexual assault without their consent. It is withholding the name of the 2013 rape accuser because it isn’t clear whether she wishes to be identified publicly.
Jurors started the day Friday by listening to a reading of Sciorra’s cross-examination and follow-up questioning by prosecutors. About 90 minutes into the reading, the jurors notified the judge they had “heard enough” and resumed their deliberations.
Weinstein’s lawyers fought to get Sciorra excluded from the case in the run-up to the trial, arguing to no avail that prosecutors shouldn’t be allowed to use her claims because they predated the enactment of the predatory sexual assault charge in 2006.
Weinstein’s lawyers have also argued that it’s plainly unfair to make the producer defend himself against something alleged to have happened more than a quarter-century ago. They contend prosecutors shoehorned Sciorra into the case to get a marquee name on the witness stand.
“Annabella was brought into this case for one reason and one reason only,” Rotunno said in her closing argument last week. “She was brought in so there would be one witness who had some star power, one witness you may recognize and one witness whose name may mean something.”