- Cannes Juror Brie Larson Unsure She’ll See Johnny Depp Movie: ‘I Don’t Know How I’ll Feel About It’ Variety
- Cannes Diary: With Johnny Depp on Its Opening Night, the Fest Steps Back Into Culture Clash Hollywood Reporter
- Paul Dano Is Ready to Join Zoe Kazan on the WGA Strike Picket Line Post-Cannes IndieWire
- Cannes Boss Thierry Fremaux Confronts Johnny Depp Backlash, Rejects Claim That ‘It’s a Festival for Rapists’ Variety
- Brie Larson Deflects Question About Johnny Depp Cannes Movie Deadline
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: juror
Cannes Juror Brie Larson Unsure She’ll See Johnny Depp Movie: ‘I Don’t Know How I’ll Feel About It’ – Variety
- Cannes Juror Brie Larson Unsure She’ll See Johnny Depp Movie: ‘I Don’t Know How I’ll Feel About It’ Variety
- Live: Stars arrive at Cannes Film Festival The Independent
- Cannes Juror Brie Larson Has Tense Exchange With Journalist Over Johnny Depp Film: ‘I Don’t Know How I’ll Feel About It’ Yahoo Entertainment
- Cannes Diary: With Johnny Depp on Its Opening Night, the Fest Steps Back Into Culture Clash Hollywood Reporter
- Cannes Boss Thierry Fremaux Confronts Johnny Depp Backlash, Rejects Claim That ‘It’s a Festival for Rapists’ Variety
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Clint Eastwood Sets New Movie, ‘Juror No. 2,’ With Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette – Hollywood Reporter
- Clint Eastwood Sets New Movie, ‘Juror No. 2,’ With Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette Hollywood Reporter
- Clint Eastwood’s ‘Juror #2’ To Star Nicholas Hoult & Toni Collette As Warner Bros. Closes In On Greenlight Deadline
- Clint Eastwood set to direct ‘Juror No. 2’ for Warner Bros. The Associated Press
- Clint Eastwood Sets ‘Juror No. 2’ at Warner Bros., Nicholas Hoult and Toni Collette in Early Talks to Star Variety
- Clint Eastwood’s Final Movie May Be Juror No. 2 With Nicholas Hoult And Toni Collette /Film
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Parkland verdict latest: Juror ‘threatened’ during deliberation over Nikolas Cruz prison sentence
Parkland shooting: Nikolas Cruz listens as verdict read out in court
A juror in Nikolas Cruz’s sentencing trial allegedly informed a court staffer that she was threatened by a fellow panel member during deliberation over the Parkland shooter’s fate.
Prosecutors raised alarm about the perceived threat in a filing asking Judge Elizabeth Scherer to launch an investigation hours after the jury recommended a life sentence for Cruz on Thursday.
“Juror X spoke to a support staff member and informed the support staff member that during deliberations she received what she perceived to be a threat from a fellow juror while in the jury room,” states the filing, obtained by CNN.
The development comes as other members of the jury have spoken of their frustration at being unable to convince a sole “holdout” that Cruz deserved the death penalty.
Foreperson Benjamin Thomas told CBS Miami that one juror had been adamant from the beginning of deliberations that Cruz should not receive capital punishment because he was mentally ill.
The juror has since denied claims in a filing to the court that she had made up her mind about the sentence before hearing the evidence.
Family members of the victims of the shooting have packed into the public gallery ahead of the verdict.
Lawyers for both sides are present, but Cruz is yet to be brought into the courtroom.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 15:21
The victims
Nikolas Cruz killed 14 high school students and three faculty members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018.
Victims of the 2018 Parkland, Florida, high school massacre
Nikolas Cruz has pleaded guilty to the 2018 shooting massacre that left 17 people dead at a high school in Parkland, Florida
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 15:27
Cruz enters court
Nikolas Cruz, initially wearing a Covid-19 face mask, is brought into the courtroom by law enforcement.
He is having a conversation with his defence counsel, Chief Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeil, before proceedings begin.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 15:31
Reminder: The jury must reach a unanimous decision to recommend the death penalty. If not, their recommendation will be life in prison with no parole.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 15:44
Court now in session
Court is now back in session Judge Elizabeth Scherer presiding.
Both sides agree they are ready to bring in the jurors for the verdict.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 15:50
Verdict forms being read
As each of the 17 verdict forms is read out by Judge Scherer, it is so far looking as if the jury has not reached a unanimous decision on the death penalty.
The jury so far has said the evidence of aggravating factors in his murders exist but did not outweigh the mitigating circumstances.
This would indicate a life sentence with no parole.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 16:07
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 16:08
The prosecution only needs the jury to recommend a death sentence for one of the 17 victims. So far the jury has not unanimously come to that decision
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 16:14
The verdict sheets continue to be read out and still, there is no charge in which the aggravating factors have outweighed the mitigating factors.
The jury is saying that while the prosecution has proven that the aggravating factors warrant the death penalty, Cruz’s mental health issues outweigh that.
There is still no death penalty possible at this point.
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 16:27
Families react as life in prison looks increasingly likely
Oliver O’Connell13 October 2022 16:30
Johnny Depp Verdict Chaos As Wrong Juror Claims Deepen From Amber Heard – Deadline
EXCLUSIVE: If there wasn’t enough drama swirling around Johnny Depp’s win last month over Amber Heard in his multimillion-dollar defamation suit, things have now turned judicially weird.
“Ms. Heard had a right to rely on the basic protection, as prescribed by the Virginia Code, that the jurors in this trial would be individuals who were actually summoned for jury duty,” says a new, partially redacted filing Friday by the Aquaman star’s legal team (read it here).
“In this case, it appears that Juror No. 15 was not, in fact, the same individual as listed on the jury panel,” attorney Elaine Bredehoft adds in language similar to a previous filing of June 24. “Ms. Heard’s due process was therefore compromised. Under these circumstances, a mistrial should be declared, and a new trial ordered.”
Unlike the previous motion and memorandum placed in the Fairfax County courthouse docket late last month to dismiss the June 1 verdict and get a new trial, today’s supplemental memo has a lot more details on what could snatch victory from Depp in his long legal battle with his ex-wife.
According to the redacted filing, the summons for jury duty was sent out to a Virginia resident in April of this year for the much delayed $15 million defamation action Depp had set off in March 2019 against Heard for a 2018 Washington Post op-ed she penned on being the “public face” of domestic abuse. However, also according to today’s filing, it seems that there are two individuals residing at the same address with, at the very least, “the same last name” — one a 77-year-old individual and another a 52-year-old individual.
The former was the one summoned, but it looks like the latter was the one who showed up. “Thus, the 52-year-old- (redacted) sitting on the jury for six weeks was never summoned for jury duty on April 11 and did not ‘appear in the list,’ as required,” Friday’s damning filing asserts.
Not noticed by officers or clerks of the court, the younger individual made it all the way to the jury without apparently ever being asked to produce any ID, or with perhaps fake ID, the filing implies. Additionally, it looks like someone filled out the required online information form either intentionally or accidentally to say that they were born in 1945.
Unaware of this at the time and during the media-frenzied trial, Heard’s defense team now wants an explanation and to see some consequences, which could take the shine off Team Depp:
As the Court no doubt agrees, it is deeply troubling for an individual not summoned for jury duty nonetheless to appear for jury duty and serve on a jury, especially in a case such as this. This was a high-profile case, where the fact and date of the jury trial were highly publicized prior to and after the issuance of the juror summonses. Virginia has in place statutory code provisions designed to ensure the person called for jury duty is the person arriving for jury duty.
Fairfax County’s Juror Questionnaire webpage furthers this goal by requiring all County residents to login using their 7-digit Juror number, Zip code, and “Birth Date.” Att. 5 (emphasis added). Those safeguards are in place and relied upon by the parties to verify the identity of the correct juror, to ensure due process and a fair trial for all litigants. When these safeguards are circumvented or not followed, as appears to be the case here, the right to a jury trial and due process are undermined and compromised
Neither reps for Heard or Depp responded to request for comment from Deadline on Friday’s filing. We are also attempting to contact the Virginia court for insight.
While the particulars are way out there, the gist of Heard’s move here is no surprise: Almost within a minute of the $10 million-plus verdict came down June 1 in favor of an absent Depp in Judge Penney Azcarate’s courtroom, Heard’s defense and $100 million countersuit team have promised to fight the ruling on appeal.
Facing having to put up am $8.3 million bond to move forward, Heard’s team may have chopped off the financial Gordian Knot with this apparent Keystone Kops-like incident.
Amber Heard’s Lawyers Single Out Juror 15 In Attempt To Get Johnny Depp Verdict Axed
The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial might technically be over, but with each passing day, it’s becoming clearer we’re not even close to a legal resolution. On Friday, Heard’s attorneys filed a 43 page motion in an attempt to get the court to overturn the more than ten million dollar judgment against their client. The filing runs down a host of different reasons they feel the verdict should be thrown out, including problems with Juror 15.
We have no idea who Juror 15 is. His identity is legally protected, but according to Heard’s legal team, his inclusion in the jury may have “compromised” her due process. That’s because, they claim, his age was reportedly listed incorrectly on the juror list panel. He was apparently identified as being born in 1945, but he looks much younger and seems, in their estimation, to have actually been born decades later. They want it investigated as to whether he actually received a summons to appear and want to look into whether he was properly vetted by the court. Here’s a quote from the filing per Law & Crime…
The Court should investigate whether juror 15 properly served on the jury. On the juror list panel sent to counsel before voir dire, the Court noted that the individual who would later be designated juror 15 had a birth year of 1945. Juror 15, however, was clearly born later than 1945. Publicly available information demonstrates that he appears to have been born in 1970. This discrepancy raises the question whether juror 15 actually received a summons for jury duty and was properly vetted by the Court to serve on the jury.
In the same legal filing, Heard’s team admits jury panel errors aren’t ordinarily grounds for getting a verdict overturned, but they claim there’s a possibility Juror 15 isn’t who he says he is, which would be, in their estimation, a due process violation. The allegation is just one in a long list of problems they run down in this most recent filing.
Amber Heard’s team claims Johnny Depp didn’t actually prove that he suffered that much financial hardship because of the op-ed. They argue it was very unlikely the actor would have appeared in Pirates Of The Caribbean 6, and they argue Depp himself said he wouldn’t have taken the role for one million alpacas. In addition, her team is arguing that what actually matters here is whether Heard believes she was abused. If she believed her own allegations, a jury can’t find she acted with malice, and they claim Depp’s legal team never proved she didn’t believe her own claims.
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were only married from 2015 to 2017, but their relationship has lived on through a series of court cases and legal issues in the aftermath. Most recently, Depp sued Heard for defamation after she published an op-ed claiming she was the victim of domestic abuse. The televised six week trial proved enormously popular with the general public, and millions watched as both took the stand and hurled allegations against each other ranging from abuse to drug use to intentionally pooping in the bed.
The jury ultimately awarded mostly in favor of Johnny Depp. The jury ruled she acted with malice and defamed him on several counts and awarded him more than fifteen million dollars in damages, which was later reduced to ten million and change. They also found in her favor on one count over a statement Depp’s former attorney made and awarded her two million dollars. There was some hope the two would settle and move on after the trial, but this latest motion would seem to indicate their legal situation will continue.
No word on whether an investigation will be launched into Juror 15, but if anything shady does come out, expect to hear about it.
How a fake juror in Depp vs. Heard trial went viral on TikTok
While some social media sleuths were quick to cast doubt on his account — including closely examining the pixelated image of what he claimed was juror paperwork he posted as alleged proof of his service — the man’s eight videos posted to TikTok last Thursday and Friday generated much attention. Combined, the posts garnered more than 2 million views and were recirculated on YouTube and Instagram by large-scale content creators reaching exponentially more people before he deactivated the account sometime Friday evening after CNN Business’ attempt to seek comment. TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
The Daily Mail circulated his remarks as an “exclusive,” while also noting in the headline how little it knew about him: “Man claiming to be JUROR in Depp-Heard trial says moment Amber lied about donating divorce settlement sunk her case and that jury believed Johnny was physically abusive — but not the instigator.” Daily Mail did not respond to a request for comment. Several other outlets similarly went forward with the story.
But the man behind the account isn’t a resident of Virginia where the trial took place — and he did not, in fact, serve on the jury. In a text message Sunday, the man admitted it “was just a prank.”
It is the latest development in how the defamation trial involving the two celebrities has been seized upon by content creators and influencers on TikTok, which spawned news cycles, revealed insight into the consciousness of users, and shone a light on what content is rewarded on social media.
According to Casey Fiesler, an assistant professor of information science at University of Colorado Boulder and a TikToker, TikTok tends to promote content that is controversial in some ways, or that the platform’s algorithm has determined people want to see. Because the man pretending to have been a juror in the case said he believed Depp’s story over Heard’s, it reinforced beliefs held by Depp’s supporters.
“People believe the things that they want to believe, absolutely,” said Fiesler.
Posting under an account name “seekinginfinite,” the faux juror stated in a TikTok that he wanted to remain anonymous for the time being but would “consider confirming my identity” in the future. His videos, in which he did not show his face, largely echoed common criticisms and observations made by social media creators throughout the course of the trial. He claimed that he grew “extremely uncomfortable” with Heard’s eye contact with him so much so that he stopped looking at her while she testified. (Heard’s frequent eye contact with the jury was one major topic of discussion during her time on the stand.) He claimed to have been a fan of Depp’s lawyer, Camille Vasquez, who became such an internet sensation that one TikToker said she gave herself a tattoo of Vasquez.
“I just think she was really sharp and knew what she was doing and did it with purpose and integrity,” said @seekinginfinite in one of the TikTok posts, responding to another user’s question about what the jury thought of Vasquez. “All the business stuff aside, she wasn’t too bad on the eyes.”
Importantly, the TikToker made clear that he didn’t believe Heard, validating a viewpoint that many spent weeks expressing on the platform: “Everything she was saying came off like bulls***,” he said in his original post, calling Heard a “crazy woman.”
The man is in his late 20s and works as a cinematographer. He appears to have been in Hawaii during deliberations and post-verdict, based on Instagram posts. When asked Friday whether the purported juror badge posted by the TikToker user could plausibly be legitimate, a spokesperson for Fairfax County’s Department of Public Affairs said it could not confirm based on the image shared on TikTok. Moreover, the spokesperson said it cannot confirm the identities of jurors who deliberated in the trial because they are under seal for one year. Jurors are, however, free to speak about their experience before then should they choose to do so.
Lending some credibility to his TikTok page was the fact that it wasn’t an entirely new account spun up just for the purpose of claiming to be a juror — there were two earlier posts pertaining to travel. But CNN Business was able to trace back to the account’s previous name and avatar for the TikTok account which linked to the man elsewhere online.
“I deleted everything”
Asked whether he served on the trial, he initially texted: “I’m sorry that is none of your business,” before acknowledging that he was behind the account: “I deleted everything, leave me alone and don’t spread my information please. I do not give you permission to use any of my information in any article,” he said. “There’s more important things to write about, such as mass shootings, climate change, war, etc.”
It is unclear what he hoped to accomplish, or why he himself would devote time to posting about the trial given the other pressing societal issues. Asked what inspired him to post at all purporting to be a juror, he said: “I’m sorry but I’m not answering any more questions.”
Throughout the trial, the vocal majority on TikTok indicated support for Depp whose case centered around whether Heard had falsely and maliciously accused him of domestic abuse in an opinion piece in The Washington Post in 2018. Heard, for her part, countersued Depp — and after six weeks of hearing their cases, the jury ultimately found that both Depp and Heard had defamed each other, with Depp being awarded $15 million in damages and Heard just $2 million.
TikTok’s algorithm works in such a way that it featured a never-ending rabbit hole of pro-Depp content, with many finding virality by posting favorable content to Depp. By nature of its algorithm, on TikTok, Fiesler pointed out, “the odds that someone with very few followers can have something go viral is higher [that on other platforms].”
“My first thought was, ‘Why do people think this is real?'” said Fiesler. “At the same time, there were a lot of comments — clearly just people assuming that it was real, and there was certainly nothing to support that. There was no kind of evidence. It seemed to me that this is totally the kind of thing somebody would just do for views, for a joke or whatever.”
Fiesler said there’s incentive for creators to post content that people engage with — to get more views, followers and an eventual financial payoffs if one’s platform grows large enough.
For those who primarily consume their news through social media, the danger is in believing that what’s shown is the full picture, said Fiesler. “One of the big challenges with misinformation on social media is its very, very hard to correct it,” she added.
Ghislaine Maxwell Juror Admits He Messed Up His Questionnaire in ‘Biggest Mistake’
A juror in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial was questioned under oath on Tuesday about why he didn’t reveal his history of childhood sexual abuse on a jury questionnaire—and about whether it impacted his ability to be impartial in the case.
Manhattan federal judge Alison Nathan also asked Juror 50 about his handful of media interviews shortly after the British socialite’s guilty verdict.
“I figured a little article about a juror giving their experience wouldn’t be record-breaking or really in the news at all,” said the juror, who went by his first and middle name Scotty David in the press.
Now Maxwell is fighting for a retrial in wake of Scotty’s January media tour, arguing he never would have made it to the panel had he truthfully answered the 50-question juror form used to weed out potential bias.
The juror was contrite on the stand, saying he never intended to mislead anyone and didn’t lie to get on the jury for the notorious sex-trafficking case. He also testified that his prior experience didn’t impact his ability to fairly evaluate the charges against Maxwell.
“This was one of the biggest mistakes I’ve ever made in my life,” the juror testified.
“If I lied deliberately, I wouldn’t have told a soul,” he later added, and apologized for wasting people’s time and money.
Scotty claimed that he didn’t realize he made an error on the jury form until a Daily Mail reporter peppered him with questions about it in a video interview.
“Did I just mess something up entirely?” the juror recalled thinking. He said he was “shocked” and didn’t know he’d missed a question asking if he was the victim of sexual abuse.
“I don’t think about my abuse anymore. It doesn’t define me.”
Nathan ordered the prosecution and defense to file briefings on the juror’s testimony as it relates to Maxwell’s request for a new trial by March 15.
Last week, Scotty’s counsel indicated he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination at the hearing, and prosecutors indicated they were making an application to grant him immunity for his testimony. By Tuesday, the Department of Justice granted that request.
The juror made headlines soon after Maxwell was found guilty.
In late December, Maxwell was convicted of aiding her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex ring in the 1990s and early 2000s. Four victims took the stand at the high-profile criminal trial and claimed Maxwell groomed them for the multimillionaire predator and sometimes participated in the sexual abuse herself. Jurors deliberated for six days before finding Maxwell guilty on five of six charges related to child sex trafficking.
Days after the verdict, lawyers for the 60-year-old British socialite argued the verdict was in jeopardy because of Scotty’s statements in the press.
The Independent, the first to publish a feature on Scotty, revealed the 35-year-old Manhattanite was himself a survivor of childhood sexual abuse—a fact unknown to the court because he didn’t disclose it on his jury questionnaire. “This verdict is for all the victims,” Scotty told the U.K.-based outlet. “For those who testified, for those who came forward and for those who haven’t come forward. I’m glad that Maxwell has been held accountable.” The publication added that Scotty’s fellow jurors “went dead silent” when he shared he was a victim of sexual abuse and argued that survivors can misremember small details about a traumatic event, but not the whole of a traumatic memory.
“I know what happened when I was sexually abused. I remember the color of the carpet, the walls. Some of it can be replayed like a video,” Scotty told The Independent. “But I can’t remember all the details, there are some things that run together.”
Scotty also granted interviews to the Daily Mail and Reuters, saying he did not recall whether the pre-trial jury questionnaire asked prospective panelists whether they had been victims of sexual assault and that he “flew through” the list of queries. He said that when fellow jurors questioned the accuracy of the accusers’ memories, he swayed some of them by talking about his own experience with sexual abuse.
In court on Tuesday, Nathan warned the juror: “You need to answer my questions today. You need to answer truthfully. If you don’t answer truthfully, you could be prosecuted for perjury.”
She also instructed Scotty not to share anything about what jurors discussed in the deliberation room.
After he swore to tell the truth, the juror reviewed Question 48 on the jury questionnaire, which asked if he had been the victim of sexual harassment, abuse or assault. Asked if his answer was accurate, he answered, “No, it is not.” The response should have been yes, he said.
The juror said he was abused when he was 9 and 10 years old but didn’t disclose what happened until high school. He testified that his mother reported the alleged crime to police but no one was charged.
Scotty also addressed Question 25, which asked whether he had ever been the victim of a crime. He had answered no. “Looking back at it now… it’s an incorrect answer,” the juror said. He said that at the time, he imagined the question referred to being robbed or mugged. “I wasn’t thinking of my sexual abuse,” he added.
The juror later said, “I don’t really think about my abuse much anymore because it doesn’t define me.”
The juror then repeated something he told news reporters weeks ago: “I flew through the questionnaire.”
Indeed, Scotty said he never thought he’d be selected for the 12-member jury out of nearly 700 prospective panelists.
When he filled out the questionnaire, he said, he was seated at a table where people dropped off their forms. He said the environment was noisy and “super-distracting” and he “skimmed” the document to get it over with, having waited three hours for an instructional video. A breakup with an ex was also occupying his mind and focus, he said.
“I did not hope to serve on this jury,” he testified. “But if you’re going to serve jury duty it might as well be something that’s interesting. But I did not set out to get on this jury.”
The juror clarified later on in the questioning, “This is something interesting. It’s not like… a fraud case [that] might be boring. I just felt like this might be something interesting that keeps my attention.”
He said he felt pressure to complete the jury questionnaire quickly and compared it to taking a test in school; he said he didn’t want to be the last one to finish.
“Did I just mess something up entirely?”
When Nathan asked whether the juror approached filling out the form “with diligence,” he answered no.
Nathan also leveled follow-up questions after Scotty said he didn’t tell friends and family about his past abuse, asking why he told the international news media.
“I only used it in order to talk to a reporter about jury deliberations … why I believe a certain way based on all the evidence that was provided during trial,” he said.
He also said that he was inspired by the victims who testified at trial and were “brave enough to give their story.”
“I felt like if they can do it, then so can I.”
On Jan. 5, the prosecution and defense each filed letters with the court about Scotty’s talks with reporters, which raised questions as to whether he was impartial at trial. “While the Court instructed jurors that they were free to discuss their jury service with anyone of their choosing, some of the statements, as related in the media, merit attention by the Court,” wrote the government, which suggested the judge investigate.
Maxwell’s lawyers argued that Scotty’s comments warranted a new trial. “Ms. Maxwell also suggests that all the deliberating jurors will need to be examined, not to impeach the verdict, but to evaluate the Juror’s conduct,” the defense wrote.
On Jan. 19, Maxwell’s team filed a motion for a new trial which argued that Scotty’s false answers on the questionnaire “resulted in a jury that was not fair and impartial, and deprived Ms. Maxwell of her constitutional right to trial by jury.” Had he truthfully filled out the form, they argued, he would have been excluded from the panel.
But Juror 50 may not have been alone in allegedly glossing over certain questions.
The New York Times interviewed a second juror, who said that they’d experienced childhood sexual abuse but didn’t say so on the questionnaire. “This juror, who requested anonymity, said that they, too, had discussed the experience during deliberations and that the revelation had appeared to help shape the jury’s discussions,” the Times reported.
“To date, this juror has not publicly revealed their identity, and Ms. Maxwell does not know who it is,” the heiress’ attorneys wrote in their motion.
“For its part, this Court expressed ‘confidence’ that its voir dire process would ‘smoke out’ a juror who was dishonest,” they added. “Ms. Maxwell relied on the Court’s process. And the Court and the parties relied on the presumption to which everyone is entitled: that potential jurors would carefully and honestly engage in voir dire.
“Unfortunately, we now know that Juror No. 50 (and at least one other juror) did not honor their obligations to give ‘only truthful answers.’”
While Nathan denied Maxwell’s initial request for a retrial and to question the other jurors, she did agree to question Scotty at a special hearing.
“To be clear, the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury,” Nathan wrote in her ruling. “Rather, it is the potential failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for that material information so that any potential bias could be explored.”
Ghislaine Maxwell Juror May Be Made to Testify About His Conduct
One member of the jury that convicted Ghislaine Maxwell last year may be forced to testify about whether he intentionally misled the court during the jury selection process — a key question in Ms. Maxwell’s effort to get a new trial.
The juror, a Manhattan man known as Juror 50, told news outlets after the trial that during deliberations he had described being a victim of sexual abuse. The revelation has clouded the verdict because the juror failed to disclose that history during jury screening before the trial, leading Ms. Maxwell to argue she was deprived of a fair and impartial jury.
Ms. Maxwell, 60, the former companion of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted on Dec. 29 of sex-trafficking and four of the five other counts against her. At the trial, the jurors heard three weeks of testimony showing Ms. Maxwell had helped Mr. Epstein recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls over the course of a decade.
In a letter made public on Wednesday, federal prosecutors in Manhattan told a judge that they were seeking Justice Department approval for an order compelling the juror’s testimony at a hearing next week, in which he would answer questions under oath about his actions.
The government acted after Juror 50’s lawyer, Todd A. Spodek, informed the judge, Alison J. Nathan of Federal District Court, that his client would “invoke his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination at the hearing.” Mr. Spodek’s letter was also made public on Wednesday.
If the juror is required to testify, he would also be granted immunity from prosecution under the order being sought by the office of Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Juror 50 revealed in news interviews after the trial that he had told fellow jurors during deliberations that he was sexually abused as a child and did not tell anyone about that abuse for years. Juror 50 said in an interview with DailyMail.com that as he told his story, the jury room “went silent.”
Understand the Ghislaine Maxwell Trial
The article also cited him as saying he had helped the other jurors understand things from a victim’s point of view.
In an interview with Reuters, Juror 50 said some jurors had questioned the recollections of two of Ms. Maxwell’s accusers who had testified at the trial, but after he recounted his story, he said, “they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse.”
But in a confidential questionnaire that was administered to prospective jurors before the trial, Juror 50 had checked a box responding “no” when asked whether he had ever been the victim of sexual harassment, sexual abuse or sexual assault.
Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers, in a brief seeking a new trial, said Juror No. 50 “did not truthfully respond to perhaps the most important question put to potential jurors about their personal experiences — a question that pertained directly to the core allegations against Ms. Maxwell: whether they had been a victim of sexual assault or abuse.”
“Had Juror No. 50 told the truth,” the lawyers wrote, “he would have been challenged, and excluded, for cause.”
The defense and prosecution may use the responses in the questionnaires as they weigh whether to exclude prospective jurors on grounds like bias.
The government, in opposing Ms. Maxwell’s motion, wrote that a defendant seeking a new trial based on a juror’s statements during the jury selection process “faces the heavy burden of establishing both that the juror deliberately lied, and that the juror otherwise would have been struck for cause.”
“On the present record, the defendant has not come close to establishing that the extraordinary remedy of a new trial is warranted,” the government said.
The government argued for a limited hearing focused on determining whether the juror deliberately lied on the questionnaire about being a victim of sexual abuse, and, if so, whether the judge “would have struck Juror 50 for cause if he had accurately responded to that question, i.e., based on a finding that he could not be fair and impartial.”
Judges, in attempting to evaluate the impact of jury room disclosures, may not question jurors about what occurred during their deliberations, but they are allowed to examine statements jurors made during the selection process.
Judge Nathan, in an opinion last week, wrote that after the trial, “Juror 50 made several direct, unambiguous statements to multiple media outlets about his own experience that do not pertain to jury deliberations and that cast doubt on the accuracy of his responses” during jury selection.
The juror’s statements were “clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence” that an impropriety had occurred — “namely, a false statement during jury selection,” the judge wrote.
“To be clear,” Judge Nathan added, “the potential impropriety is not that someone with a history of sexual abuse may have served on the jury.”
“Rather,” she said, “it is the potential failure to respond truthfully to questions during the jury selection process that asked for that material information so that any potential bias could be explored.”
Judge Nathan ordered Juror 50 to appear at the hearing next Tuesday and respond to her questions under oath. Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers and the government have been allowed to submit proposed questions in advance.
Mr. Spodek, the juror’s lawyer, and Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, each declined to comment.
Jury in Elizabeth Holmes Trial Seized on Two ‘Smoking Guns’ to Convict Theranos Founder, Juror Says
SAN JOSE, Calif.—In their second week of deliberations, jurors in the trial of Elizabeth Holmes seized on what one juror described as two “smoking guns” that sealed the fate of the Theranos Inc. founder.
Huddled in a fifth-floor courtroom, the four women and eight men were grappling over whether she had defrauded large Theranos investors about her blood-testing startup. Jurors zeroed in on two pieces of evidence they believed showed Ms. Holmes intentionally lied to investors, said Susanna Stefanek, known throughout the trial as Juror No. 8.
For some, the damning evidence was a report Theranos gave investors that Ms. Holmes altered to make it look like it was an endorsement from pharmaceutical giant
Pfizer Inc.,
Ms. Stefanek said. What was worse for her, the juror said, was a document of financial projections given to prospective investors, including prosecution witness Lisa Peterson, who works for the DeVos family office, which had invested $100 million in Theranos.
“There were just so many falsehoods on that sheet of paper,” said Ms. Stefanek, an editorial manager at Apple Inc. The 2014 document projected $40 million in annual revenue from drug companies, though jurors had heard from government witnesses that Theranos had no such contracts at the time.
The juror said the discussion was among their most significant in the more than 50 hours of deliberations before they found Ms. Holmes, who claimed to revolutionize blood testing, guilty on four charges that she conducted a yearslong fraud scheme against investors.
The jury of retirees, government employees, retail and technology-industry workers followed the judge’s instructions carefully and examined evidence underpinning each of the counts, said Ms. Stefanek, who added that they were collegial and didn’t raise their voices, even when debating.
They deadlocked on three other counts involving allegations that Ms. Holmes defrauded investors, and acquitted her on four counts that she defrauded patients. The foreman, juror No. 2, said in an interview that he at first believed Ms. Holmes to be guilty on the patient counts, but flipped his views after a jury debate. He and Ms. Stefanek said the jury didn’t believe there was evidence linking Ms. Holmes directly to patient allegations that they received false blood-testing results.
Hours before rendering its verdict Monday, on the seventh day of deliberations, jurors wrestled with Ms. Holmes’s most gripping testimony, when she tearfully alleged in shocking detail that her former Theranos Inc. deputy and longtime boyfriend had abused her, which he has denied.
Though the jurors generally believed Ms. Holmes that she was abused by her former deputy and boyfriend, Ms. Stefanek said, they quickly concluded that prosecutors were correct in closing arguments that those allegations had no bearing on whether Ms. Holmes committed fraud against patients and investors during her time running Theranos.
“There was a certain amount of cynicism that it was a sympathy ploy,” the 51-year-old Ms. Stefanek said, adding that she believed Ms. Holmes’s allegations but agreed they had no place in the trial.
The courthouse complex in San Jose, Calif., where jurors in the trial of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes heard 15 weeks of testimony.
Photo:
Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal
The upshot: Ms. Holmes’s bold gamble to testify on her own behalf—and her team’s decision to raise the abuse allegations without tying them directly to what happened at Theranos—fell flat. The jurors created a star system to judge the credibility of witnesses, Ms. Stefanek said, and rated Ms. Holmes as a 2 on a scale of 1 to 4, the lowest score of any witness.
Attorneys for Ms. Holmes and a representative for the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of California didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Jurors began deliberating during the week of Christmas, picking a foreman. Each initially shared their general view after hearing 15 weeks of testimony from 32 witnesses. Housed in a courtroom in the downtown San Jose courthouse, they spread out in a rough arc around a screen and computer given to them to view exhibits, Ms. Stefanek said.
In that first survey, Ms. Stefanek said, many people were “fairly noncommittal,” taking to heart the judge’s instructions not to make up their minds before deliberating.
From there, they organized their thoughts on the 29 government and three defense witnesses, going through exhibits and notes and writing up the key points each made on large, white sheets of paper that they stuck to one wall of the courtroom.
Many of the credibility rankings the jurors gave witnesses were high, Ms. Stefanek said, including for former Defense Secretary
Jim Mattis,
representatives from Theranos business partners
Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.
and Safeway Inc., and patients and doctors who testified about receiving Theranos results that troubled them.
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis earned a strong credibility score as a witness from the jurors in the Elizabeth Holmes trial, one juror said.
Photo:
David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News
Witnesses who appeared to have an agenda lost stars, Ms. Stefanek said, including former lab worker Erika Cheung, who seemed to be “invested in a certain outcome.”
In an email Thursday, Ms. Cheung said: “I respect the jury’s effort, time, and energy.” She called the ranking “an indication that there is still stigmatization against whistleblowers.”
Ms. Cheung noted that prosecutors brought evidence at trial corroborating the red flags she had raised about Theranos, adding: “A life goal of mine was never to play a role in sending someone to prison.”
Ms. Holmes’s two-star rating was based on how much she had at stake in the case and the likelihood she was spinning her testimony to make herself look good, Ms. Stefanek said. No witness received a rank of one.
Michael Kew, juror No. 11, said from the balcony of his home in Santa Cruz, Calif., on Wednesday night that he found Ms. Holmes more trustworthy than some of his fellow jurors did. Other jurors declined to comment or couldn’t be reached for comment.
During their first three days of deliberating, jurors recapped the witnesses, Ms. Stefanek said. The jury returned on Dec. 27 and took an anonymous poll with their votes on each of the 11 counts.
Former Theranos lab worker Erika Cheung was cross-examined in the Holmes trial.
Photo:
Vicki Behringer
Three counts were unanimous: guilty verdicts related to Ms. Holmes’s pitches to three of the investors in the indictment. The other eight counts came back mixed once the foreman tallied up the results on a whiteboard.
Though they initially were divided, jurors soon agreed to acquit Ms. Holmes on the one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud tied to patients, Ms. Stefanek said.
She said the jury concluded that prosecutors didn’t present enough evidence to show that Ms. Holmes knowingly pitched a faulty product to induce patients to pay for tests.
The jury was in agreement, Ms. Stefanek said, that the Theranos lab was run shoddily and not in the way to be expected from a company setting out to achieve the highest quality in medical care. But jurors thought the burden of proof on defrauding patients was higher.
“If all we’d had to prove was that she knew there might be problems in the lab and that might end up harming patients, that would be one thing,” Ms. Stefanek said.
Jurors also weren’t persuaded by the testimony of one patient, Erin Tompkins, who had alleged that she received an incorrect Theranos blood test result indicating she could be HIV-positive.
Ms. Stefanek said she wasn’t persuaded the test actually showed Ms. Tompkins was HIV-positive.
On Thursday, Ms. Tompkins said she recognized that the jury had a challenging job. She said Ms. Holmes’s defense lawyer muddied her story by asking what she viewed as convoluted questions that made it look like she had misinterpreted the result. She said she continues to strongly believe the Theranos test result showed she was HIV-positive.
Erin Tompkins, in sunglasses, testified that she got an incorrect Theranos blood test result indicating she could be HIV-positive, though one juror says the jury overall wasn’t persuaded.
Photo:
PETER DASILVA/REUTERS
Throughout the deliberations, the jury offered points and counterpoints. Ms. Stefanek said she often took on the role of raising points brought up by the defense.
She could come up with nothing, however, to counter the testimony of two former Theranos lab directors who testified that they rarely or never stepped foot in the lab and did little more than sign some paperwork.
“It was comical, really,” she said of what the jurors called the “stuntman directors,” adding, “there was no way to put a good spin on it.”
With the patient counts decided midway through the second week, Ms. Stefanek said, the jury turned to the investor counts.
That was when they zeroed in on what Ms. Stefanek called the “smoking guns” involving the doctored document relating to Pfizer and the inflated financial projections to the DeVos family office.
“She was trying to make this thing look better than it was, and that was just clearly a deceptive act,” Ms. Stefanek said of the Pfizer report.
In the latter instance, Ms. Peterson, who worked for the DeVos family office, had scribbled “900 stores” at the top of the document, which she testified was a reference to Ms. Holmes saying Theranos planned to roll out to 900 Walgreens pharmacies.
That was also problematic, Ms. Stefanek said, because jurors had heard that months earlier Walgreens had scaled back its projections for the rollout to 200 stores as Theranos missed benchmarks. Walgreens ultimately never had Theranos centers in more than 41 stores.
She was willing to give Ms. Holmes some benefit of the doubt because a bit of exaggeration is common in Silicon Valley, Ms. Stefanek said. But she said: “When it got to providing those hard money figures that were completely bogus, that was when I had to say no.”
She said some jurors weren’t persuaded by the government’s claim that Ms. Holmes falsely embellished Theranos’s relationship with the U.S. military, and it didn’t figure heavily into deliberations.
The jury did find fault with demonstrations Ms. Holmes gave to investors and VIP visitors to Theranos. Witnesses for the government testified that in these cases, Theranos had taken a Potemkin-village approach, showing its proprietary-testing devices, but actually taking back the blood samples to its lab to be run on conventional lab machines.
The unresolvable divide in the jury came over three counts related to early investors in Theranos: Black Diamond Ventures, Hall Group and Alan Eisenman.
Jurors deliberated in a fifth-floor courtroom in a federal courthouse in San Jose, Calif.
Photo:
Jason Henry for The Wall Street Journal
Ms. Stefanek said she was in a minority in wanting to vote “not guilty” on these counts, thinking there was far less evidence of misrepresentations made to these investors. Mr. Kew confirmed that the majority of the jurors were on one side of the issue.
On the count related to Mr. Eisenman, a fiery Texan who talked back during cross-examination and was repeatedly chided by the judge, some jurors concluded that one factor cut against a conviction: Theranos had offered to buy back his shares. Ms. Stefanek said that action made it difficult for some jurors to view Mr. Eisenman as a victim of a scheme to take his money.
Mr. Eisenman couldn’t be reached for comment.
The jury debated for days on those three counts related to investors, Ms. Stefanek said. On Monday, jurors sent a note to U.S. District Judge
Edward Davila
telling him they were at an impasse. When Judge Davila told them to keep working, they discussed the counts for three more hours.
Neither side would change its stance. They had done all they could do.
“We all believed that she set out with the best of intentions on changing the world and doing a great thing,” Ms. Stefanek said. “But we also agreed that ended up causing her to make some big mistakes, and to do some fraudulent things.”
Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and her family leave after the verdict rendered by the jury of four women and eight men.
Photo:
BRITTANY HOSEA-SMALL/REUTERS
—Christopher Weaver and Heather Somerville contributed to this article.
Write to Sara Randazzo at sara.randazzo@wsj.com and Meghan Bobrowsky at Meghan.Bobrowsky@wsj.com
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