Harvey Weinstein said infighting in the jury was denying him a fair trial.
The jurors who decided Harvey Weinstein’s fate in his New York retrial were ordered to take a break and “cool down” earlier on Wednesday, as their discussions seemingly broke down amid shouting and threats.
The unusual admonishment came after a private meeting between a juror and the judge overseeing the trial — the third such conversation in a trial marked by jury problems — and led Mr. Weinstein to appeal directly to the judge in a failed bid for a mistrial.
The dramatic development came just hours before the verdict on Wednesday, when the jury’s foreman asked to speak to the judge, Justice Curtis Farber, and was taken into a backroom where he told the judge and the lawyers his concerns.
The foreman, who came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in 1996, said that he had made up his mind on one of the charges against Mr. Weinstein and would not change his position, leading other jurors to yell at him, according to a transcript of their conversation.
The deliberations had become so heated that one juror told him, “‘Oh, we will see you outside,’” the foreman told Judge Farber. “They keep attacking me.”
“They are trying to change your mind?” Judge Farber asked him.
“Trying to change my mind” and speaking to him in a “bad way,” the foreman said. “You talk to me loud, I have to defend myself.”
Mr. Weinstein was in the courtroom during the extraordinary exchange.
But after Judge Farber came outside and relayed the conversation in open court, Mr. Weinstein asked if he could directly address the court. The infighting among the jury of seven women and five men was resulting in an unfair trial, Mr. Weinstein said.
“This is not right for me, for me the person on trial here,” he said. “This is my life on the line and you know what, it’s not fair. It’s simple. It’s not fair.”
He asked the judge to declare a mistrial and “find another jury that doesn’t fight.”
Justice Farber thanked Mr. Weinstein and tried to reassure him. “I’m not going to allow any injustice to happen to you,” he said. The judge told Mr. Weinstein that it was not the first time similar issues had developed among jurors.
“Jurors fight,” Judge Farber said. “They act childish at times. They get heated.”
During the closed-door conversation, the foreman told Judge Farber that he felt “afraid inside there.”
“I can’t be inside there,” the foreman said, according to the transcript.
“You are concerned for your safety?” Judge Farber asked.
The foreman said yes and described how one juror returned from the bathroom and glared at him. Two other jurors could back up his claims, the foreman said.
“People keep attacking other people,” the foreman said.
The episode provided another peek into the friction that can often develop among jurors in high-stakes trials, disagreements that generally remain behind closed doors.
It was not the first time that conflict among the jurors hearing the Weinstein retrial had come into view in open court in the four days since they began their discussions. The juror was the third to speak to Judge Farber since Friday.
On Friday, a juror 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 heard, he believed, amounted to misconduct. Judge Farber thanked the man and the jury returned to their deliberations.
On Monday, the foreman came forward for the first time to say that he was concerned about the arguments in the jury room. The other jurors, he told the judge and the lawyers outside the courtroom, were also talking about Mr. Weinstein’s past.
“I don’t hear talking about his past,” the juror said, adding, “I’m here for taking the decision myself for what happened at the time, in the moment.”
Judge Farber asked him to return to the deliberations and gave the full panel of jurors instructions on civil deliberations.
A third juror, a woman, requested to speak to the judge later that day to let him know that the deliberations had been going well.
The friction led Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, to ask repeatedly and unsuccessfully for a mistrial. On Wednesday, after the foreman complained again, Mr. Aidala asked for another mistrial and accused the judge of not keeping the jurors safe.
“He is clearly intimidated,” Mr. Aidala said of the foreman. Judge Farber denied his request for a mistrial, saying that jurors fight all the time.
“He is a big guy,” Judge Farber said of the foreman. “He’s not particularly scared. He’s basically saying, ‘I am not changing my mind.’ He is not being intimidated to change his mind.”
Moments later, the jury came back and delivered its partial verdict: guilty of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree for one accuser, Miriam Haley, and not guilty of the same count for a second, Kaja Sokola, a model. The jury will be called back on Thursday to continue deliberations on the trial’s third count, of third-degree rape, connected to accusations that Mr. Weinstein attacked Jessica Mann.
Mr. Weinstein was convicted of rape and a criminal sexual act at trial in Manhattan in 2020. The verdict, which resulted in a 23-year prison sentence, was seen as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement. He was subsequently convicted of sexual assault in a separate case in Los Angeles and sentenced to 16 years in prison there. He is appealing that verdict.
Last year, New York’s highest court overturned the Manhattan conviction, and the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said his office would move to retry Mr. Weinstein.
In April, after a new criminal sexual act charge was added to the case, jury selection for the retrial began.
