‘Jurors May Not Impeach Their Own Verdict’: Prosecutors Urge Judge to Deny Harvey Weinstein’s Request To Toss His Rape Conviction

Prosecutors have asked a judge to dismiss the defense attorney’s request to vacate Harvey Weinstein’s felony sex crime conviction based on their allegation that the jurors were intimidated and pressured into reaching the guilty verdict, and that the court failed to address the juror misconduct when it was brought to the judge’s attention. “Juror testimony cannot, as a matter of law, be used to impeach a guilty verdict absent extremely narrow exceptions not applicable here,” prosecutors wrote in their response motion filed on Wednesday. Last month, as the Sun reported, defense attorneys presented two affidavits from two separate jurors and argued that the guilty verdict against their client should be vacated because it was reached “under duress,” as lead defense attorney Arthur Aidala phrased it, when he spoke to reporters outside the Manhattan criminal courthouse, where the trial had taken place in the spring. In June, the jury rendered a split verdict on the three-count indictment brought by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, headed by President Trump nemesis Alvin Bragg, against the Oscar-winning film producer: two felony sex crimes and one third-degree rape charge. Weinstein was found guilty on the first count, relating to the former production assistant Miriam Haley, who accused him of forcibly performing oral sex on her in his Manhattan apartment in 2006. But he was found not guilty on the second sex crime offense, relating to a former Polish model, Kaja Sokola, who also claimed the producer forced oral sex on her in a hotel room in Manhattan that same year. The third-degree-rape accusation, brought by the once aspiring actress Jessica Mann, who claimed Weinstein raped her in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel, was left undecided with the judge declaring a mistrial after the jury’s foreman refused to return to the deliberation room, saying the atmosphere had become unbearable for him. Prosecutors intend to retry Weinstein on the third charge, which, ironically, would also be his third trial on that same count at the same Manhattan courthouse. In 2020, Weinstein, now 73, faced his first trial and was found guilty both on the charges regarding Ms. Mann and Ms. Haley. The judge sentenced him to 23 years in prison. But in 2024, his defense team scored a historic victory, when New York’s court of appeals overturned that conviction and ordered a new trial. The highest court in the state had found that the trial judge wrongly admitted testimony against Weinstein based on vivid allegations from women who were not part of the indictment, including a “Sopranos” star, Annabella Sciorra, who testified that Weinstein barged into her apartment in the 1990s and raped her, then ruined her career after she refused his further advances.Despite this victory, however, Weinstein remained incarcerated because he had also been convicted of other sex crimes in California in 2022, where he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Due to his deteriorating health, he was granted permission to stay at Bellevue Hospital during the course of his second trial, which was held in May and June of this year. He is now back at Rikers. Jury deliberations of this retrial got heated, as the Sun reported in detail. On the second day of deliberations, one juror told the presiding judge, Curtis Faber, that he had overheard two other jurors badmouthing a third juror in the elevator. He returned to the courtroom later that day and asked to be dismissed because he felt that the discussions among the jurors were not “fair and just” and that “there is a bit of a shunning happening.” The judge tried to deescalate the situation by reminding the jurors that “expressing displeasure or trying to convince someone else they might be wrong or right.. is just the normal course of jury deliberations.” On the sixth day of deliberations, the jury reached the split verdicts on counts one and two, but remained hung on the rape charge. The following day, the foreman refused to go back into the deliberation room, telling the judge he was being threatened by other jurors. “I feel afraid inside there,” the foreman told Judge Farber, according to a transcript of the conversation reviewed by the Sun. “I can’t be inside there.”The judge declared a mistrial on the rape charge and ended the deliberations. Mr. Aidala pleaded that the judge declare a mistrial on all three counts, based on what he viewed was an extraordinary case of jury misconduct. After the proceedings ended, defense attorneys met with two jurors and interviewed them. They presented the sworn statements in their motion requesting to dismiss the conviction, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, arguing that the court had not addressed the juror’s concerns adequately and thus violated Weinstein’s due process rights. By contrast, prosecutors did not meet with any jurors. “In preparing this opposition to defendant’s motion, the People have not separately interviewed any jurors or asked them to testify about the tenor of jury deliberations,” they wrote in Wednesday’s filing, which was signed by Matthew Colangelo, Nicole Blumberg, Shannon Lucey and Becky Mangold, who have been prosecuting the case on behalf of Mr. Bragg, the recently re-elected Manhattan district attorney.“As the U.S. Supreme Court has explained, the ‘centuries old’ no-impeachment rule serves to give ‘substantial protection to verdict finality’ and assures jurors that ‘after being discharged they will not be summoned to recount their deliberations, and they will not otherwise be harassed or annoyed by litigants seeking to challenge the verdict.,” the four attorneys wrote. The prosecutors cited other cases that “addressed the exact same issues,” juror misconduct, and relied on the “binding legal principles” that “jurors may not impeach their own duly-rendered verdicts by complaints involving the tenor of the jury’s deliberations.” One of the jurors had told the defense attorneys, “I was directly pressured to convict Mr. Weinstein on the Miriam Haley charge. … If I could have voted by secret ballot, I would have returned a not guilty verdict.” But prosecutors described his post-trial statement as “inconsistent” with what the jurors had told the judge when questioned during deliberations. The juror, they wrote, “claimed after his meetings with defense counsel that he observed ‘threats’ and ‘intimidation,’ but told the Court during deliberations that he saw only ‘playground stuff’… and unequivocally told news reporters on video on the last day of trial that ‘it’s not like a fight was gonna break out. No, obviously not.’” Prosecutors asked the judge to dismiss the defense’s motion without a hearing, but wrote that, if the judge decided otherwise, they would be ready to call witnesses. A hearing is scheduled for December 22. The judge has yet to respond to the parties and decide if he will rule after hearing additional oral arguments.

‘Jurors May Not Impeach Their Own Verdict’: Prosecutors Urge Judge to Deny Harvey Weinstein’s Request To Toss His Rape Conviction

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