U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan on Tuesday, May 9, 2023, giving final instructions to jurors in the civil trial in Manhattan, where former President Donald Trump is accused of raping and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll.
A jury began deliberations Tuesday morning at the civil trial where former President Donald Trump is accused of raping and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
The nine-member panel started discussing potential verdicts in the case at 11:50 a.m. ET after Judge Lewis Kaplan gave the panel final instructions and a 10-question verdict form in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
If jurors unanimously determine that Carroll proved either of her claims, of battery and defamation, they will decide whether to award her compensatory and punitive monetary damages,
There are six men and three women on the jury.
E. Jean Carroll, former U.S. President Donald Trump rape accuser, arrives at Manhattan Federal Court for the continuation of the civil case, in New York City, May 9, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Carroll, 79, alleges in a lawsuit that Trump sexually assaulted her in a dressing room of the Bergdorf Goodman department store in the mid-1990s.
Trump cannot be prosecuted for the alleged rape because the statute of limitations for such a crime has long since passed.
But Carroll is making a civil claim of battery for the alleged attack under a New York state law enacted in late 2022 that opened a one-year window for lawsuits alleging sexual assaults would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations.
Carroll also claims that Trump defamed her last fall when he said she had made up her account of being raped.
Trump, 76, called the allegations “a complete con job,” and said that she was not his “type.”
Trump, who leads early polls for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, did not testify during the trial.
But portions of his deposition taken last fall by Carroll’s lawyer were played for jurors during the trial, and during closing arguments on…
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