The jury in the Harvey Weinstein sexual misconduct trial has reached a verdict. The verdict has not been announced yet.
This story is breaking…
The jury resumed deliberations Monday morning, returning after Friday’s cliffhanger in which jurors questioned New York Supreme Court Judge James Burke as to whether they were legally allowed a deadlock on two charges with the heaviest possible prison sentence while reaching consensus on lesser counts of rape and assault.
On Friday, Burke instructed the jury to continue its deliberations, urging a consensus on all charges. After a weekend off, jurors were back in the jury room at 9:30 AM ET today. Weinstein arrived at New York State Supreme Court with what looked like a bit more unshaven scruff than usual.
The possible deadlock involves two counts of predatory sexual assault, each carrying a possible lifetime prison sentence and each involving actress and rape accuser Annabella Sciorra and one of the two primary accusers in the trial. To convict on the predatory counts, the jury must find that Weinstein committed crimes against Sciorra and Miriam Haley, and/or Sciorra and Jessica Mann.
Mann and Haley have accused Weinstein of, respectively, rape and sexual assault by forced oral sex. The jury could vote to convict Weinstein of their individual charges — the most serious of which carry possible prison sentences up to 25 years — while either deadlocking or finding not guilty on the predatory charges.
Although the statute of limitations has expired on Sciorra’s claim of rape in 1993-94, her testimony is permitted in conjunction with that of Haley and Mann to establish predatory behavior.
In addition to the predatory counts, which carry prison sentences of 10 years to life, Weinstein is charged with one count of a criminal sexual act in the first degree (against Haley) and two counts of rape (one in the first degree, one in the third, both involving Mann). The first degree counts carry possible prison sentences of five to 25 years; the third degree count, up to four years.
Haley, now 42, was a Project Runway production assistant in 2006 when, she says, Weinstein forcibly performed oral sex on her in his Soho apartment on a July night in 2006. Mann, 34, a former actress, model and hairstylist, claimed Weinstein raped her on March 18, 2013, at the DoubleTree Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, resulting in the two counts of rape; the jury can convict on only one of those counts.
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