A former producer for the Wu Tang Clan hip-hop group who served as his own lawyer was acquitted on Friday of the top sexual assault charge he faced, but the judge declared a mistrial on several other counts on which a jury said it was deadlocked.
The verdict was a partial victory for the producer, Derrick Harris, known in rap circles as True Master. He has been in jail for four years fighting accusations that he attacked a woman in his Harlem brownstone on Sept. 13, 2011, forcing her to perform oral sex and then attempting to rape her on a pool table. He was also accused of punching another woman in a park earlier on the same day.
Mr. Harris, 45, smiled and raised his hands in celebration as the jury of six men and six women in State Supreme Court in Manhattan acquitted him of the top count, criminal sexual act, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years.
Though the jury had deliberated for only one day, Justice Abraham Clott said he had to declare a mistrial on the other counts — attempted rape, sex abuse, assault, unlawful imprisonment and escape — because one juror could not serve beyond Friday.
Moments earlier, Mr. Harris had said he would not consent to have an alternate juror take her place, nor would he agree to let 11 jurors continue deliberating. The lead prosecutor, Jung Park, asked the judge to order the jurors to continue working.
Patrick Muncie, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office, said no decision had been made about whether to retry Mr. Harris on the remaining counts. Justice Clott set bail at $500,000, and Mr. Harris was sent back to jail.
During the three-week trial, Mr. Harris represented himself and cross-examined the woman who accused him of sexual assault. He said she had framed him for rape after he rebuffed her sexual advances.
The woman, a 47-year-old retail manager and clothing designer, testified she had asked him for a tour of his house after seeing a for sale sign out front. She said she had met Mr. Harris at a New Year’s Eve party in 2006 and knew him slightly. She happened to be walking on 120th Street and saw him sitting on the stoop.
Once she was inside, she testified, Mr. Harris locked the doors, threatened to beat her and forced her to perform oral sex. Then, she said, he punched her, slammed her down on the pool table, took off her jeans and tried to rape her. When she wriggled away, he threw her headfirst to the floor, breaking off the attack only when she pleaded that she had a sick mother, she said.
The woman testified that she had bolted for a bathroom and climbed half-naked out a window, hanging from the ledge and screaming for help. Several neighbors called the police, and her screams could be heard on the 911 tapes that were played for the jury. A crowd formed and broke in the front door to free the woman, who stumbled into the street without pants, witnesses said.
During his cross-examination, Mr. Harris questioned the woman about graphic details of their encounter. At one point, Mr. Harris asked why she had told a hospital nurse that she was not sure if he had penetrated her, when she later said he had not.
“You didn’t penetrate me,” the woman said, “because I wasn’t going to let you. Not alive.”
Later, when he took the witness stand, Mr. Harris said he had rejected the woman’s sexual advances, and in retaliation she had tried to frame him. He also suggested that the police had planted evidence to support her story. “You can say a lot of this stuff doesn’t make sense,” he said during his summation. “It’s like a conspiracy. I don’t even say a simple conspiracy.”
Mr. Harris emphasized to jurors that no DNA evidence nor trauma to the woman’s genitals was found to support her accusations. He contended that her injuries, mostly scrapes and bruises, might have been caused when she climbed out of the window. “There is no physical evidence,” he said.
Ms. Park acknowledged during closing arguments that the case boiled down to two versions of what happened.
But she argued the woman’s testimony was corroborated by evidence that the police had found in the pool room, including a wineglass broken during their struggle and a stick the woman said Mr. Harris had used to intimidate her. The prosecutor also said that 911 tapes verified her account.
“It was complete humiliation, a total violation of her body, to show you who was True Master,” Ms. Park said.
Before his arrest, Mr. Harris had been a moderately successful producer, having helped to create hits for rappers like Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Method Man, Ghostface Killah and others. Most recently, he produced a collaborative album with KRS-One, titled “Meta-Historical,” which was released in 2010.
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