Russell Brand: Can a Jury Forget the Exposé?

Becca HartwellOkay, so get this. 12 strangers walk into a courtroom in London, and the very first thing they're told is to forget the thing that put everyone there.

MilesForget a whole documentary. Good luck with that.

Becca HartwellI can't unhear a song I heard once in 2007, Miles.

MilesSame, and I can't unsee a bad paint job either.

Becca HartwellOf course you can't. Anyway, I'm Becca, he's Miles, and this is Star Witness.

MilesQuick fox first, because this is serious. Russell Brand's trial opened this week at Southwark Crown Court.

Becca HartwellSeven charges, six women, and three of those counts are rape.

MilesHe's pleaded not guilty. He denies it all.

Becca HartwellRight. Every allegation here is just that, an allegation, until a jury says otherwise.

MilesAnd we'll keep saying it, because a headline, a documentary, and a courtroom are three very different things.

Becca HartwellThey are. A documentary can make you furious, and a newspaper can make you curious. Only a trial can actually decide anything.

MilesWhich is the whole puzzle, because the case started on television and in a newspaper.

Becca HartwellOh, you're gonna love this part. The jury doesn't get to watch any of it.

MilesWait, none of it?

Becca HartwellThe judge screened out people who'd seen the Channel 4 documentary or read the Sunday Times piece.

MilesSo what does a fair jury even look like for a story this widely told?

Becca HartwellHold that thought and ask me whether the media is quietly on trial, too.

MilesI'm asking, but first things first.

Becca HartwellFair. So let's start with what the prosecution actually told the jury. The prosecutor is Riel Karmy-Jones, KC, and the first thing she wanted the jury to hold onto is that these six women didn't know each other.

MilesHold on. Not at all?

Becca HartwellThat's what Variety's writeup of her opening says. They came forward independently.

MilesWhich is the whole point of saying it out loud on day one. If the accounts line up and nobody coordinated, that's the prosecution's strongest card.

Becca HartwellMm-hmm. Spell out why, though. Why does independence matter so much?

MilesBecause the obvious pushback to a stock of accusations is that people fed off each other. If six women never met, that explanation gets harder to sell. Not impossible, but harder.

Becca HartwellAnd that's why you lead with it. You give the jury a frame before they hear a single witness.

MilesThough it's still her claim in an opening. Nobody's been cross-examined yet. Openings are the trailer, not the movie.

Becca HartwellOkay, walk me through that for anyone who's never sat in a courtroom. What is an opening, actually?

MilesIt's the prosecution telling the jury what it intends to show. It isn't evidence itself. The evidence comes later from witnesses and documents, and the defense gets its turn to challenge it.

Becca HartwellFair, but the trailer was loud. The Associated Press said she called him a ruthless sexual predator who assaulted six women over the course of a decade.

MilesAnd Brand denies every bit of that.

Becca HartwellEvery bit. And this next part sounds like a bad screenplay.

MilesOh, no.

Becca HartwellVariety says a former friend of his is said to have described a goal of sleeping with 5,000 women, plus, quote-unquote, "rules for doing it."

MilesRules. I'm picturing a laminated card.

Becca HartwellOh, Miles.

MilesSorry, but look at how that's framed. It's what was said in the prosecution's opening, a former friend's account relayed by a lawyer. It isn't proven.

Becca HartwellSo what does a jury do with a claim like that?

MilesThat's the real question. Even if someone said it, a goal and a set of rules is a long way from showing what happens with any one woman. Jurors will have to ask what it adds to each charge.

Becca HartwellColor, not proof, unless somebody ties it to the specific accounts.

MilesRight, and I'd expect the defense to have plenty to say about it.

Becca HartwellMeanwhile, Deadline ran the line about an indiscriminate and voracious appetite. Their headline put it as allegedly.

MilesAllegedly doing a lot of work there.

Becca HartwellHey, it's the law, and the law likes its hedging words. Now, the timeline matters. Three charges of rape, three of sexual assault, and one of indecent assault.

MilesShoot, and the dates?

Becca Hartwell1999 to 2009. News Court had that from jury selection on Monday, and Deadline had the same breakdown.

Miles10 years. That's a long stretch for a jury to hold in their heads, and each charge has its own woman and its own set of facts to keep straight.

Becca HartwellAnd a long time ago, which is where my brain keeps snagging. Those years are way before anyone made a documentary.

MilesYeah, so the question is how a documentary turned into a courtroom.

Becca HartwellThe timeline starts in 2023, not in a police station. The Sunday Times, The Times, and a Channel 4 Dispatches film all landed with an investigation first.

MilesFirst, before any charge.

Becca HartwellBefore any charge. Courthouse News lays out the sequence at jury selection, and the order matters.

MilesWhy does the order matter so much to you?

Becca HartwellBecause it separates two different things. Journalists investigating is one thing. A prosecutor deciding there's enough to charge is another, and the sequence shows the first came before the second.

MilesThen the Crown Prosecution Service steps in.

Becca HartwellApril 2025, the CPS charged him with five offenses involving four women.

MilesFive offenses, four women. That's the first batch.

Becca HartwellAnd then, plot twist, in January, two more charges came in involving two further women.

MilesSo the case grew after the first charging decision.

Becca HartwellIt did, and notice the gap. Between the 2023 investigation and those first charges is a stretch of more than a year.

MilesWhich tells you that expose didn't produce charges overnight. Somebody had to take it from there.

Becca HartwellRight, which is why I keep calling the expose the origin story. No documentary, maybe no file on a prosecutor's desk.

MilesMaybe, but an origin in the media isn't evidence of anything about guilt. A film can start a fire without proving what's burning.

Becca HartwellOh, that's a very mild sentence. You've been waiting to say that.

MilesA little bit. I spent years watching a car's box story get treated as proof of its condition. A famous owner doesn't mean a sound engine. You still open the hood.

Becca HartwellFine, but you can't pretend the hood was opened at random. Somebody went looking, and the looking is why we're here.

MilesSure. Who went looking and who decided what to charge are two different jobs, though. The newspapers don't get a vote at the Crown Court.

Becca HartwellMm, fair. Light disagreement, I'll allow it, as long as the hood stays metaphorical.

MilesGenerous.

Becca HartwellOne more detail from that same courthouse news piece. The women have lifelong anonymity.

MilesWhich means nobody on this show or in that courtroom will ever be naming them.

Becca HartwellRight. So the public conversation has one name in it, his.

MilesThat cuts both ways, doesn't it? One man's face on every headline and six people the public will never see.

Becca HartwellIt does, and it changes how the story feels. We talk about the allegations, but the women stay abstract, which is exactly what the protection is for.

MilesThough that's also why the independence point matters. We can't judge their accounts from out here, so the people weighing them are the ones in the courtroom.

Becca HartwellWhich brings us to the jury box. Before anybody got near a jury box, the defense tried to stop the whole trial from starting.

MilesPostpone it?

Becca HartwellPostpone it. A legal commentary report says the defense argued publicity would prejudice jurors.

MilesWhich, fair. If you're Brand's lawyers, that's the first thing you'd try.

Becca HartwellAnd Judge Bennathan said, "No, October seventh."

MilesWhat does a no like that actually signal?

Becca HartwellCareful, because that's our own speculation, not something the report tells us. My guess is he thought choosing jurors carefully could handle the problem, but it's a guess.

MilesFair. What we can say is the trial went ahead on schedule, which puts a lot of weight on the filtering.

Becca HartwellIt does, so here's the number. Irish Times reporting says fifty prospective jurors were screened.

MilesFifty for twelve seats.

Becca HartwellPlus one reserve, and of those fifty, six were excused because they remembered the Channel Four documentary or the newspaper article from 2023.

MilesSix out of fifty, roughly one in eight.

Becca HartwellWait, I'd have guessed higher. Years of headlines.

MilesMe too, honestly. Though, remember what that number measures. It's people who recalled the coverage, not a count of everyone who ever heard of the case.

Becca HartwellOr they're very good at saying so in a courtroom.

MilesOkay, that's fair. Nobody's checking their browser history at the door.

Becca HartwellAnd we don't know how the questions were put. The reporting we have gives the numbers, not the method, so I'm not gonna guess at it.

MilesGood. Anyway, tell me about the panel that survived.

Becca HartwellSworn in on Tuesday, eight men and four women.

MilesEight and four. Does the split tell us anything?

Becca HartwellNot from what we have. The reporting gives the split and nothing about what it means, so I'm leaving it as a number.

MilesFair enough. And the reserve?

Becca HartwellOne extra juror in case somebody drops out, because this isn't a weekend thing.

MilesRight, the length. What are we looking at?

Becca HartwellSix weeks expected. Could run to nine.

MilesSo anywhere from six to nine weeks of keeping the phone in the pocket and the searches unsearched.

Becca HartwellAnd that's the realistic test. It's easy to be careful on day one. Week five is a different animal.

MilesMaybe. And for anyone on that panel, that's real life, work, family, a feed that keeps refreshing, all while a case runs in the background.

Becca HartwellRight. So the screening on day one is only the first checkpoint. Whether it holds over weeks is something we can't know from here.

MilesAgreed. All we can say is where things stand, which is a panel picked, a reserve on standby, and a long haul ahead, with plenty of the courtroom still unseen by anyone within it.

Becca HartwellWhich sounds like the end of it, doesn't it? Expose it out, clean jury in.

MilesIn theory.

Becca HartwellHere's the twist, though. The expose didn't leave the room. So what exactly did the judge say to the panel?

MilesThe ITV news report on jury selection gives the judge's wording to the panel, and he said the allegations in the program and the Times article were firmly denied.

Becca HartwellFirmly denied by Brand.

MilesBy Brand.

Becca HartwellAnd then the part that made me sit up, the judge also told them the jury will still hear something about both.

MilesWait, both? The documentary and the article?

Becca HartwellBoth. Those two things are not being scribed out of the courtroom.

MilesHuh. I assumed screening meant the expose gets quarantined, sealed off from the whole trial.

Becca HartwellScreening was about who sits. The judge's wording is about what those people are told.

MilesDoes hearing firmly denied even things out?

Becca HartwellIt means the judge's wording carries Brand's denial alongside the mention, but it isn't evidence either. It's wording from the bench to a panel, not a finding.

MilesOkay, so what are the jurors actually being asked to do?

Becca HartwellNot to carry any prior exposure into the trial. They get told it exists, they get told the denial, and then they're asked to leave their own impressions outside.

MilesHmm. That's a big ask of a human brain.

Becca HartwellIt is, but there's a guardrail attached. A piece on Law Commentary describes the no research warning as meant to make sure any verdict rests on courtroom evidence rather than outside reporting.

MilesSo no googling the case on the bus home.

Becca HartwellNo googling, no reading the follow-ups, no rewatching the documentary for a refresher.

MilesOkay. I'll give you that one. It's a rule with a purpose. The verdict is supposed to come from what's said in the room.

Becca HartwellAnd honestly, I think that's a real safeguard. Think about it. The exposé is the reason this case exists, and it's also the one thing 12 people have to hold at arm's length. Both of those are true at once.

MilesSure, on paper. In practice, I keep coming back to one thing. Setting aside isn't the same as unknowing.

Becca HartwellMeaning?

MilesMeaning the judge can tell them not to carry it in. He can't check their pockets. People can sincerely believe they've set something aside and still be nudged by it without noticing.

Becca HartwellGive me a concrete version.

MilesA juror hears a witness describe something, and a flicker of whatever they half remember from the news gets there first. Who catches that?

Becca HartwellNobody catches it. That's the honest answer. But the alternative is a country where nobody can be tried once the press has covered them, and then the press just decides who's untouchable.

MilesFair. That's a worse system.

Becca HartwellSo the rules do what rules can do. Screen out the ones who remember, warn the rest, make the evidence the only thing on the table.

MilesAnd that cuts the other way, too. If the jury's heard something about both, nobody can say this was tried in a vacuum.

Becca HartwellRight. And nobody can say it was tried on the exposé alone either, since the verdict is meant to rest on the courtroom evidence.

MilesAnd hope 12 people are better at setting things aside than most of us are. So no winner on this one for me. A real safeguard that might leak.

Becca HartwellA safeguard that might leak. I'll take that as a draw, with both of us still a little unsettled.

MilesWhich leaves the other side of the courtroom. Brand has his own theory of why any of this exists.

Becca HartwellOh, he does. Brand pleaded not guilty to every one of those charges, and the brief the show is working from says he frames the whole thing as an agenda against his voice.

MilesWhich is a very on-brand way to put it.

Becca HartwellHa. Fair. But to be clear, that's his position as the brief relays it. We don't have a quote from him on it.

MilesRight. And I'll say this for the claim. He's a man whose entire career was talking, and now the loudest thing about him is a courtroom.

Becca HartwellOkay, but a theory about motives isn't a defense to a rape charge. The jury doesn't get to vote on whether he was inconvenient to somebody.

MilesNo, nobody's saying it is.

Becca HartwellThen why does he lead with it?

MilesBecause it's a story you can tell without engaging any single count. When the specifics are awkward, a bigger story is easier to tell.

Becca HartwellAnd it fits a bigger instinct, that every accusation is really about something else. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's just an accusation.

MilesWhich is why the courtroom exists, to sort the one from the other.

Becca HartwellSwitching gears, though, we've been here before on this show.

MilesWeinstein.

Becca HartwellWeinstein. Jay-Z. Different men, different industries, but the same shape. A story lands in public first, and the courtroom arrives later.

MilesRight. And I'd keep that comparison light. Those were American cases with American rules. This one is British, with a British judge, a British jury, and British reporters who started it.

Becca HartwellAnd it still went global.

MilesInstantly. A Channel 4 documentary and a Sunday Times investigation, and suddenly people in Los Angeles have opinions about a Crown Court.

Becca HartwellOh, you're gonna love this part. That's exactly the content gap we keep circling. Scandals that start in one country and end up everyone's business.

MilesAnd what I notice is how much the first telling shapes everything after. In the earlier cases, too, the opening story sets the terms, and the legal process has to work within them.

Becca HartwellWhereas the courtroom moves at its own pace and with its own rules, which is a very different tempo from a news cycle.

MilesSo is the agenda claim a defense, or is it a mood?

Becca HartwellMood. A strong one, though. And the prosecution has its own mood.

MilesWhich brings us to the part we've been dodging. We both have to say what we actually think.

Becca HartwellTime for the verdicts, in the show sense of the word.

MilesGavel's ready, and my opinions are warmed up.

Becca HartwellOkay, my verdict first. I think a fair jury is possible, but coverage sets a starting line before anyone is sworn in, and the media is the one on the stand whether anyone says so or not.

MilesOh, here we go.

Becca HartwellHear me out. A documentary and a newspaper investigation shaped what the public believed long before a courtroom existed. My sympathy is with a process that has to start from behind that line.

MilesNoted. My take looks at what the jury will actually weigh. The exposé got this started, but the accounts are what they'll hear. Six women, each telling their own story, and the prosecution says none of it was coordinated.

Becca HartwellSays. Prosecution says.

MilesYes, says, and the defense gets to test every word of it. That's the whole point of a trial.

Becca HartwellMm, okay, I'll give you that, though I'm still uneasy about the starting line.

MilesAnd I'd add, a documentary can't convict anyone. Only 12 people in that room can.

Becca HartwellWhich brings us to the line we should say plainly. Brand is presumed innocent. He pleaded not guilty, and guilt is for the jury, not for us, and not for the internet.

MilesAgreed, 100%. We're two people with microphones, not a courtroom.

Becca HartwellThank God, honestly. Nobody wants my verdict on anything that isn't a podcast.

MilesI'd trust yours over most. Fine, my last word. Let the evidence do the talking.

Becca HartwellAnd the media gets to sit in the back row and wait for the ruling. And that's our case file for the week. Okay, last words, one line each. Mine, the story arrived long before the trial did, and I can't stop thinking about that.

MilesMine, a story can start a case, but only a courtroom gets to finish it.

Becca HartwellAnd a quick reminder, the trial is ongoing, and Brand is presumed innocent.

MilesRight. There's a lot left to listen.

Becca HartwellNow, homework for you at home. Got a celebrity case you want us to pick apart? Drop it in a review or tag us @StarWitnessPod.

MilesNew episodes land every Wednesday, so subscribe and you'll catch the verdict when it comes.

Becca HartwellThanks for hanging out with us, everybody, and thanks for listening so carefully. See you next Wednesday.