Russell Brand trial: jury must be unanimous on seven charges as deliberations begin

The jury in the Russell Brand trial has retired to consider its verdicts on seven charges after three weeks of evidence at Southwark Crown Court. Brand, 51, denies all of the allegations against him, and no verdicts have been delivered.

The jury of eight men and four women was sent out on Tuesday afternoon, after the judge, Mr Justice Bennathan, spent the morning summing up the evidence. He told jurors he could accept only a unanimous decision. “I can only accept a verdict from all 12 of you that is a unanimous verdict,” he said.

What Russell Brand is accused of

Brand is charged with three counts of rape, three counts of sexual assault and one count of attempted indecent assault. The charges relate to six women and to alleged incidents between 1999 and 2009. The attempted indecent assault count was originally an allegation of indecent assault, and was amended during the trial. He has pleaded not guilty to every charge and is on bail. According to the reports, he has attended court daily, accompanied by his wife.

The court heard that the alleged offences took place in a variety of settings, among them a hotel room, workplaces and a private home. The women cannot be identified because of legal protections for complainants in sexual offence cases.

The prosecution case

Prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones KC told jurors that Brand was a “ruthless, calculated and manipulative” predator. She said he was “child-like in his expectation that his every desire should be met” and treated women as “a means to an end”. In her closing speech she stressed that the six women did not know one another but described a similar pattern of behaviour.

She told jurors the women had “nothing to gain”. They had not sought publicity, taken part in a documentary or made compensation claims, she said, adding that the only benefit to them might be “some closure”.

The defence case

Brand gave evidence in his own defence. He accepted he had been “obsessed” with sex when he was younger and that he had “misused” his fame, but he said every encounter was consensual. He described consent as “fundamental” and, in his words, in many ways more important than sex itself. When the individual allegations were put to him, he repeatedly answered “no”.

His barrister, Ian Winter KC, urged jurors to separate questions of behaviour from questions of criminality. “It is not criminal to treat women unkindly before, during or after sex,” he said, adding that if there is consent, “it is lawful”.

Mr Winter also attacked how the case reached court. He said the women came forward “very many years” after the alleged events, and only after a 2023 Channel 4 Dispatches documentary that, he argued, had “poisoned the wells” of justice and left the complainants “thoroughly contaminated”. He questioned the delays in the women approaching police. He also asked why Brand was accused of “only three rapes in 10 years” given the number of women he had slept with. The prosecution rejected the suggestion that the women’s accounts were tainted.

What happens next in the Russell Brand trial

The judge told the jury he would not cover every witness in his summing-up and would instead pick out those who seemed most significant. Jurors now deliberate in private, and the court has not said how long that may take. The Russell Brand trial continues, and Brand is presumed innocent unless and until the jury returns a guilty verdict on any count.

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