How ‘12 Angry Men' caused Weinstein mistrial
All eyes may have been on Harvey Weinstein as he awaited his fate on the 13th floor of Manhattan criminal court but it was even tenser behind the scenes.
The disgraced movie mogul, who was found guilty of one count of sexual assault on Wednesday but cleared of a second, had an outstanding rape charge collapse on Thursday as tensions in his jury reached breaking point.
There had been rumblings of discontent: reports of shouting, bullying – one juror is even said to have challenged another to a physical fight.
Judge Curtis Farber tried in vain to keep proceedings on track, insisting these were nothing more than the 'normal tensions' which occur during the course of a trial, particularly one as high-profile as this.
Nobody can be quite sure what happened behind the closed doors of the jury room, except for the 12 members of the jury. But on Thursday, the foreman headed into court and refused to return to the deliberations.
For Weinstein, a fallen Hollywood titan, the drama could have challenged any of the hundreds of films he produced before he was toppled by the MeToo scandal.
Addressing the foreman's concerns, Arthur Aidala, acting for Weinstein, claimed he had never heard of a case where a 'grown man who was in good physical shape' was 'so intimidated' that he point-blank refused to go back to the jury room, calling it evidence of 'gross juror misconduct'.
The first signs that something was amiss came on Friday, when one of the 12 asked to be removed from the case, aggrieved that a fellow juror was being treated in an 'unfair and unjust' way by others.
'Playground stuff' was happening, with a member of the jury being shunned and spoken about behind their back, he said.
Judge Farber, rejecting the defence's request for a mistrial, said: 'This is nothing other than normal tensions during heated deliberations.' Noting the juror who made the request was the youngest of the group, he suggested his age 'makes him uncomfortable with conflict'.
'Jurors attacking each other'
When proceedings resumed on Monday, the foreman raised concerns that his peers were aggressively pushing others to change their mind, and straying beyond the specifics of Weinstein's charges.
'I feel like they are attacking, talking together, fighting together. I don't like it,' he said, according to a transcript of his conversation with Judge Faber and legal teams.
From there the tensions steadily ramped up, with the disgraced producer addressing the court on Wednesday after a fourth complaint from a juror, pleading: 'This is not right for me… this is my life that's on the line.'
The same day, Judge Farber told the court there had been 'some fighting in the jury room' and that at least one juror told another: 'I'll meet you outside one day.'
'It's 12 people who don't know each other and are randomly thrown together, and there are so many variables,' Sabrina Shroff, a veteran New York defence lawyer, told The Telegraph.
'Race is a variable, sexuality is a variable, class is a variable. So you don't really know which one of these things is at play when they're deliberating.'
Lone holdouts could often end up feeling 'bullied' by their peers, she said – particularly in a high-profile trial, which breeds suspicions they have one eye on a TV or book deal afterwards.
For now, the source of that conflict remains a matter of speculation, but John C Coffee, a professor at Columbia Law School, suggests it could stem from the fact that Weinstein was a major figure felled by the MeToo movement.
'This case falls on one of the leading fault lines in our society,' Prof Coffee said, arguing that society had shifted rightwards since Weinstein was first toppled from his Hollywood perch in 2017.
'Seeing this backsliding may enrage some women, or men who share a feminist view. Both sides may be trodding on the other's sensitivities' in the 'packed-in, sweaty tension' of the jury room, he continued.
Bill Cosby, who was convicted of sexual assault before the decision was overturned in 2021, was another MeToo casualty.
The first attempt to secure his conviction in 2017 ultimately fell apart when the jury failed to reach a consensus, amid fractious scenes that threatened to spill over into violence.
According to ABC News, five sheriff's deputies were stationed outside the door of the jury room, and repeatedly barged in during arguments because they feared a brawl was taking place.
One male juror on the case, which was held in Pennsylvania, is said to have become so enraged that he punched a wall.
'I think he broke his pinky knuckle,' an juror who served alongside him said. 'If we kept going, there was definitely going to be a fight.'
The tensions were reportedly exacerbated by the fact that jurors were crammed into a room so small they could not stretch their legs – a situation so frustrating that some would spontaneously burst into tears.
New York, where the Weinstein case was heard, works hard to keep its jurors fed, watered and content to limit disruptions, according to Ms Shroff.
'They get a snack, an 11am break and a 3pm break, and the court will send cookies or something like that,' she revealed.
'And if they don't, the jurors will send a note to the court saying that last week, yesterday, 'we didn't get cookies'.'
After throwing out Weinstein's rape charge, Judge Farber said most of the jurors had denied they were riven by bullying and fighting.
'They all thought they were involved in a normal discourse, and they don't understand why the [foreman] bowed out,' he said.
In the end, the jury seems to have been so hopelessly at odds that they could not even agree on how divided they were.
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