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    Inside the Jury Room at the Weinstein Trial, Rancor and Recrimination

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    As the panelists deliberated over whether the former Hollywood mogul should be convicted of sex crimes for a second time in Manhattan, accusations began to fly.Inside the jury room at the second New York sex crime trial of Harvey Weinstein, things were getting tense.The 12 jurors had already acquitted the former Hollywood mogul on one felony sex crime charge, and they had begun to deliberate on a second when the discussions suddenly turned pointed, and personal.One juror, who had been calm and had even prayed with the others, abruptly began accusing another of having been “bought out” by Mr. Weinstein or his lawyers.The moment, which occurred on the second day of deliberations in a case that was brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office after its earlier sex crime conviction against Mr. Weinstein was overturned, foreshadowed the rancor and dysfunction that would ultimately consume the panel, leading it to deadlock on Thursday over the question of whether Mr. Weinstein raped an aspiring actress in a hotel room in 2013.This account of what occurred in the jury room is based on interviews with several jurors, particularly one panelist who came forward twice to voice concerns to the judge about the behavior of his fellow jurors.That panelist, juror No. 7, described the interactions as having grown increasingly contentious and marked by personal attacks.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Weinstein Juror Complains to Judge About ‘Playground Stuff’ by Others

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      A member of the jury at Harvey Weinstein’s Manhattan retrial on sex crime charges said that another had become the subject of a “bit of a shunning” during deliberations.As the Manhattan jurors deciding Harvey Weinstein’s fate were about to begin their second day of deliberations on Friday, a note was delivered to the judge. One of the 12 had a concern.The juror, a young man, was summoned to the courtroom. He sat in the jury box and began to vent his frustrations.He wanted to “report what I heard and saw yesterday,” he told Justice Curtis Farber of State Supreme Court, who is overseeing the trial. The man said he had overheard others on the jury — in an elevator and outside the courthouse on Thursday — talking about another member of the group. What he had observed, he believed, amounted to misconduct.Justice Farber thanked the man and sent him back to the jury room. The judge then denied a motion by Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers for a mistrial, saying it did not appear that the discussions cited by the juror involved actual trial evidence.“Notably,” the judge said, “whoever was the topic of conversation has not reported it to the court.”The surprising episode provided a rare peek into the friction that can develop among jurors in a high-stakes trial, disagreements that generally remain behind closed doors. It also seemed, at least briefly, as though it might derail the disgraced film mogul’s second New York trial on sex crime charges, and create another twist in the long-running case.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Delays Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jury Selection, Concerned About ‘Cold Feet’

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      Judge Arun Subramanian said he feared jurors might grow uneasy over the weekend and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial was delayed on Friday over worries that some jurors might get “cold feet” before the start of the high-profile case.Judge Arun Subramanian, who is overseeing the case, expressed concern that if jurors were selected before the weekend, they could grow uneasy and drop off the panel before the trial begins on Monday. The decision came after one potential juror sent an email to the court asking to be left off the panel for “issues of personal well-being,” the defense said.Twelve jurors and six alternates will be selected and sworn in on Monday at Federal District Court in Manhattan, ahead of opening statements in the case.The jury will be tasked with deciding whether the music mogul was a “swinger” with unorthodox sexual proclivities, or a predator who used his power to abuse victims in drug-dazed encounters. If convicted, Mr. Combs, who was once a roundly celebrated figure in the music industry, could spend the rest of his life in prison.The jurors will be anonymous, meaning their names will not be disclosed in public court. They will not be sequestered, however, so it is up to them to shield themselves from the media coverage and other chatter about the case.Over three days, dozens of New Yorkers took the witness stand inside the courtroom, where they were asked to describe in detail what they had seen and heard about the case against the artist and executive, who has been the subject of swirling allegations of sexual abuse over the past year and a half.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Jury Is Set for the Trial of Daniel Penny, Accused in Subway Killing

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      Lawyers selected 12 Manhattanites and four alternates to hear a manslaughter case that divided the city. Opening statements will be Friday.A jury of 12 Manhattanites has been chosen to decide the fate of Daniel Penny, a Long Island man who put a homeless man in a fatal chokehold on a subway car last year.Mr. Penny, 26, faces charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely, who had a history of mental illness and who Mr. Penny said had been threatening passengers.The jurors and four alternates, who Justice Maxwell T. Wiley ruled would be kept anonymous, include a cross section of residents from across the borough, including Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Washington Heights and Harlem.On Friday, those jurors will hear the lawyers explain in opening arguments their conceptions of a case that divided New York City as soon as a video of Mr. Penny, who is white, restraining Mr. Neely, who was Black, rocketed around the internet. Some New Yorkers saw Mr. Penny’s actions on the F train as criminal. Others saw him as a champion for frightened riders.Jury selection, which began last week, was contentious. Screening more than 100 prospective jurors, the first step in a criminal trial, took nearly two weeks and at times set off arguments between the lawyers.The defense, led by Mr. Penny’s lawyer Thomas A. Kenniff, hired a jury consultant who has worked with a wide spectrum of defendants, including the president of Brazil, Kyle Rittenhouse and O.J. Simpson. The consultant, Jo-Ellan Dimitrius, was in court with Mr. Penny’s legal team throughout the two weeks, taking notes and making suggestions.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Drug Clinic Operator Convicted in $3 Million Kickback Scheme

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      Casey Mahoney, 48, of Los Angeles, illegally paid “body brokers” to lure clients, a federal jury found.A California man who operated addiction treatment facilities in Orange County was convicted this week of paying nearly $3 million in illegal kickbacks for referrals of patients to his facilities, according to federal prosecutors.From at least October 2018 until December 2020, the man, Casey Mahoney, 48, of Los Angeles, paid about $2.87 million to “so-called ‘body brokers’” who gave thousands of dollars to patients to coax them into Healing Path Detox L.L.C. in Huntington Beach and Get Real Recovery Inc. in San Juan Capistrano, two treatment centers Mr. Mahoney operated, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said in a statement on Friday.Some of the money that the body brokers gave to patients was used by the patients to buy drugs, the department’s statement said.After a nine-day trial, a federal jury in Los Angeles found Mr. Mahoney guilty on Wednesday of one count of conspiracy related to offering illegal remunerations for patient referrals, seven counts of illegal remunerations for patient referrals and three counts of money laundering, prosecutors said. He was acquitted on one count of aiding and assisting the preparation of a false tax document.The money-laundering charges, the most serious on which Mr. Mahoney was convicted, each carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Sentencing is set for Jan. 17, 2025.Treatment facility operators may pay a group like a marketer or an advertiser to promote their services to patients. But the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act of 2018 prevents the operators from paying body brokers kickbacks based on how much revenue the patients they referred brought in, as Mr. Mahoney did, according to the indictment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Before the Alec Baldwin Trial’s End, 2 Jurors Had Doubts About His Guilt

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      When the judge threw out the case, the jurors said, they had doubts that Mr. Baldwin was guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of the cinematographer on the set of the film “Rust.”When the judge threw out the involuntary manslaughter case against Alec Baldwin earlier this month after finding that the prosecution had withheld evidence that could have helped his defense, it left key questions that have hung over the case for more than two years unresolved.But two members of the jury who spoke about the case publicly for the first time on Saturday said in interviews that they had been far from convinced — given the evidence they had heard before the trial was brought to its abrupt end — that Mr. Baldwin was guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the fatal shooting of a cinematographer on a film set.“As the week went by, it just didn’t, it didn’t seem like a very strong case,” Johanna Haag, known to the court as juror No. 7, said in a phone interview on Saturday.Gabriela Picayo, who was identified in court documents as juror No. 9, said that she too had been having serious doubts about the case against Mr. Baldwin before it was dismissed.A critical moment for her during the trial, she said, was when she learned that the armorer who had loaded a live round into the gun that day, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, had already been convicted of involuntary manslaughter. “I’m still here, I’m still open to hearing and obviously trying to stay unbiased,” Ms. Picayo said of her thinking at the time, “but I was starting to move towards the direction of thinking that this was very silly and he should not be on trial.”The trial centered on what happened on Oct. 21, 2021, when Mr. Baldwin was rehearsing on the set of the film “Rust” in New Mexico with a gun that he had been told was “cold” — meaning that it should have contained no live ammunition — when it suddenly fired a bullet that killed Halyna Hutchins, the movie’s cinematographer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. Nurse Lucy Letby Convicted of Attempted Murder in Retrial

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      Ms. Letby, who was previously found guilty in a string of murders and attempted murders, was retried and found guilty of another attempted murder.Lucy Letby, a neonatal nurse who was convicted last year of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill six others at the English hospital where she worked, was found guilty on Tuesday of the attempted murder of another premature baby.A jury had initially failed to reach a verdict in the case of the child, known as Baby K to protect her identity, and Ms. Letby was retried over the last four weeks in a court in Manchester in the north of England. She will be sentenced on Friday and is already serving a life term for the earlier convictions.Ms. Letby, 34, was working at the Countess of Chester Hospital in the city of Chester, in northwestern England, between June 2015 and June 2016 when an unexpectedly high number of babies in the neonatal unit where she worked died or became seriously unwell.Nicola Wyn Williams, a senior crown prosecutor, said that while Ms. Letby had “continually denied that she tried to kill this baby or any of the babies that she has been convicted of murdering or attempting to murder,” the jury had “formed its own view.”“The grief that the family of Baby K have felt is unimaginable,” she said. “Our thoughts remain with them and all those affected by this case at this time.” More

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      Donald Trump and American Justice

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      Readers offer a range of reactions and reflections.To the Editor:Re “Guilty: Jury Convicts Trump on All 34 Counts” (front page, May 31):I was overcome with a sense of giddiness on Thursday afternoon as I walked through Manhattan and news broke that former President Donald Trump had been convicted on 34 felony counts.I was glued to the live news updates on my phone, and soon enough messages began pouring in from like-minded friends who shared my sense of satisfaction that the justice system is alive and well, and that the verdict showed us that no one is above the law.Nonetheless, it took mere minutes before a more sober reality set in, and I contemplated how the verdict will likely play into the strategic hands of Mr. Trump’s campaign, energizing his ardent supporters, perhaps even working in his favor among some sympathetic swing voters.That so many of us find that morally offensive and reprehensible, while so many of our fellow Americans simply do not, reaffirms how deeply and dangerously divided this country truly is.Cody LyonBrooklynTo the Editor:Our system of laws has spoken. A jury of his peers found Donald Trump guilty on all counts in what was supposed to be the weakest of the criminal cases against the former president.Unfortunately, our Constitution does not prohibit a convicted felon from running for president; it even allows an elected candidate who has been criminally convicted to govern, even from prison.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Donald Trump, culpable

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      [Ahora también estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos]El jueves, en un humilde juzgado del Bajo Manhattan, el expresidente y actual abanderado republicano fue declarado culpable de 34 delitos graves de falsificación de registros comerciales. La decisión del jurado, y los hechos presentados en el juicio, ofrecen otro recordatorio —quizás el más crudo hasta la fecha— de las muchas razones por las que Donald Trump no es apto para ocupar el cargo.El veredicto de culpabilidad en el caso del pago a cambio de silencio del expresidente fue emitido por un jurado unánime de 12 neoyorquinos elegidos al azar, que consideró que Trump, el muy posible candidato a la presidencia por el Partido Republicano, era culpable de falsificar registros comerciales para evitar que los votantes se enteraran de un encuentro sexual que él creía que habría sido políticamente perjudicial.Los estadounidenses pueden preguntarse sobre la importancia de este momento. La Constitución no prohíbe que las personas con una condena penal sean elegidas o ejerzan de comandante en jefe, aunque estén tras las rejas. Los fundadores de la nación dejaron esa decisión en manos de los votantes. Muchos expertos también han expresado su escepticismo sobre la importancia de este caso y sus fundamentos jurídicos, que se basó en una teoría legal inusual para buscar un cargo de delito grave por lo que es más comúnmente un delito menor, y Trump sin duda buscará una apelación.Sin embargo, lo mejor de este caso sórdido es la prueba de que el imperio de la ley obliga a todos, incluso a los expresidentes. En circunstancias extraordinarias, el juicio se desarrolló como cualquier otro juicio penal en la ciudad. El hecho de que 12 estadounidenses pudieran juzgar al expresidente y posible futuro presidente es una muestra notable de los principios democráticos que los estadounidenses aprecian.El juez Juan Merchan, el jurado y el sistema judicial neoyorquino impartieron justicia con celeridad, proporcionando a los estadounidenses información vital sobre un candidato presidencial antes de que comience la votación. Varias encuestas han demostrado que la condena afectará la decisión de muchos votantes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More