Editing Roscoe Arbuckle (section)

===Trials===
Arbuckle's trial was a major media event. The story was fueled by [[yellow journalism]], with many newspapers portraying Arbuckle as a gross lecher who used his weight to overpower innocent girls. [[William Randolph Hearst]]'s nationwide newspaper chain exploited the situation with exaggerated and [[sensationalism|sensationalized]] stories. Hearst was gratified by the profits that he accrued during the Arbuckle scandal, and he allegedly said that it had "sold more newspapers [...] than when the [[Sinking of the RMS Lusitania|''Lusitania'']] went down."<ref name="Hearst">{{cite book |last1=Brownlow |first1=Kevin |title=The Parade's Gone By ... |date=1968 |location=Berkeley |isbn=9780520030688 |page=486 |publisher=University of California Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wCD5EH64Qw8C |access-date=27 April 2023}}</ref> Morality groups called for Arbuckle to be [[Capital punishment|sentenced to death]].

====First trial====
[[File:Roscoe Arbuckle Trial - 1921.jpg|thumb|Arbuckle and his defense lawyers at the first trial, November 1921]]
The trial began on November 14, 1921 in the San Francisco city courthouse.<ref name="trutv1"/> Arbuckle hired as his lead defense counsel Gavin McNab, a competent local attorney. The principal witness was Prevon.<ref>Daily Mirror headlines, October 1, 1921</ref> At the beginning of the trial, Arbuckle told his estranged wife Minta Durfee that he had not harmed Rappe. Durfee believed him and appeared regularly in the courtroom to support him. Public feeling was so negative that shots were fired at Durfee as she entered the courthouse.<ref name="Hearst"/>

Brady's first witnesses during the trial included model Betty Campbell, who attended the party and testified that she saw Arbuckle with a smile on his face hours after the alleged rape occurred. Another witness, hospital nurse Grace Hultson, testified that it was very likely that Arbuckle raped Rappe and bruised her body in the process. [[Criminologist]] Dr. Edward Heinrich testified that fingerprints on the hallway door proved that Rappe had tried to flee, but that Arbuckle had stopped her by placing his hand over hers. Dr. Arthur Beardslee, the hotel doctor who had examined Rappe, testified that an external force seemed to have damaged the bladder. However, during cross-examination, Campbell revealed that Brady had threatened to charge her with [[perjury]] if she did not testify against Arbuckle. Dr. Heinrich's claim to have found fingerprints was cast into doubt after McNab produced a maid from the St. Francis Hotel who testified that she had thoroughly cleaned the room before the investigation took place. Dr. Beardslee admitted that Rappe had never mentioned being assaulted while he was treating her. McNab coaxed Hultson to admit that the rupture of Rappe's bladder could have been the result of [[cancer]] and that the bruises could have been caused by the heavy jewelry that Rappe was wearing that evening.<ref name="trutv1"/>

On November 28, Arbuckle testified as the defense's final witness and was reported to be simple, direct and unflustered under both direct and cross-examination. In his testimony, Arbuckle claimed that Rappe (whom he testified to have known for five or six years) entered the party room (1220) around noon that day, and that sometime afterward he retreated to his room (1219) to change clothes after Mae Taub, daughter-in-law of [[Billy Sunday]], asked him for a ride into town. In his room, Arbuckle discovered Rappe in the bathroom vomiting into the toilet. He claimed that Rappe had told him that she felt ill and asked to lie down, and that he carried her into the bedroom and asked a few of the party guests to help treat her. When Arbuckle and a few of the guests entered the room again, they found Rappe on the floor near the bed tearing at her clothing and experiencing violent convulsions. To calm Rappe, they placed her in a bathtub of cool water. Arbuckle and Fischbach then took her to room 1227 and called the hotel manager and doctor. At this point all those present believed that Rappe was just very drunk, including the hotel doctors. Assuming that Rappe's condition would improve if she slept, Arbuckle drove Taub into town.{{Citation needed|date=September 2019}}

The prosecution presented medical descriptions of Rappe's bladder as evidence that she had suffered from an illness. In his testimony, Arbuckle denied that he had any knowledge of Rappe's illness. During cross-examination, assistant district attorney Leo Friedman aggressively grilled Arbuckle about Arbuckle's refusal to call a doctor when he found Rappe sick and argued that Arbuckle had refused because he knew of Rappe's illness and saw a perfect opportunity to rape and kill her. Arbuckle calmly maintained that he did not physically hurt or sexually assault Rappe during the party, and he also stated that he had never made any inappropriate sexual advances against any woman in his life. After more than two weeks of testimony with 60 prosecution and defense witnesses, including 18 doctors who testified about Rappe's illness, the defense rested. On December 4, 1921, the jury returned five days later [[hung jury|deadlocked]] after nearly 44 hours of deliberation with a 10–2 not-guilty verdict, and a [[mistrial (law)|mistrial]] was declared.<ref name="trutv1"/>

Arbuckle's attorneys later concentrated on juror Helen Hubbard, who had told other jurors that she would vote guilty "until hell freezes over." She had refused to examine the exhibits or read the trial transcripts, having already decided on Arbuckle's guilt in the courtroom. Hubbard's husband was a lawyer with connections to the district attorney's office,<ref name=Fine>{{cite book |title=Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial |date=April 1, 2001 |last=Fine |first=Gary Allen |page=151 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn=978-0226249414}}</ref> and he expressed surprise that she was not challenged during the ''[[voir dire]]'' process. Some of the jurors revealed that they believed Arbuckle to be guilty, but not beyond a [[reasonable doubt]]. During the deliberations, some jurors joined Hubbard in voting to convict, but all but one eventually changed their vote. Researcher Joan Myers suggests that Arbuckle's defense team targeted Hubbard as a villain because there had been a great deal of media attention on women serving in juries, a practice that had been legalized only four years earlier. Myers also records Hubbard's account of the jury foreman's attempts to pressure her to change her vote. While Hubbard offered explanations on her vote whenever challenged, Thomas Kilkenny, the other juror who voted guilty, remained silent and quickly faded from the media spotlight after the trial ended.<ref name=Myers>{{cite journal |title=The Case of the Vanishing Juror |url=http://www.feminismthreepointzero.com/?page_id=33 |last=Myers |first=Joan |journal=Feminism 3.0 |date=March 18, 2009 |access-date=January 30, 2015}}</ref>

====Second trial====
The second trial began on January 11, 1922 with a new jury but with the same legal defense, prosecution and presiding judge as those of the previous trial. The same evidence was presented, but this time, witness Zey Prevon testified that Brady had forced her to lie. Another witness who testified during the first trial, a former studio security guard named Jesse Norgard, testified that Arbuckle had once offered him a cash [[bribery|bribe]] in exchange for the key to Rappe's dressing room but that Norgard refused. Norgard claimed that Arbuckle stated that he wanted the key to play a joke on Rappe. During cross-examination, Norgard's testimony was impugned when he was revealed to be an ex-convict under indictment for [[sexual assault|sexually assaulting]] an eight-year-old girl, and was seeking a sentence reduction from Brady in exchange for his testimony. In contrast to the first trial, Rappe's history of [[promiscuity]] and heavy drinking was detailed. The second trial also discredited some major evidence such as the identification of Arbuckle's fingerprints on the hotel bedroom door. Heinrich disowned his testimony from the first trial and stated that the fingerprint evidence was likely faked. The defense was so confident that Arbuckle would be acquitted that they did not call him to testify, and McNab did not deliver a closing argument to the jury. However, some jurors interpreted the refusal to permit Arbuckle to testify as a sign of guilt. After five days and more than 40 hours of deliberation, the jury returned on February 3, deadlocked with a 10–2 majority in favor of conviction, resulting in another mistrial.<ref name="trutv1"/>

====Third trial====
[[File:ArbuckleExonerated1922.jpg|thumb|upright|News story of the not-guilty verdict, 1922]]
By the time of Arbuckle's third trial, his films had been banned and newspapers had been filled for the past seven months with stories of Hollywood orgies, murder and sexual perversion. Delmont was touring the country performing one-woman shows based on her involvement with the case and lecturing on the evils of Hollywood.{{Citation needed|date=September 2019}}

The third trial began on March 13, 1922, and McNab took a forceful approach, attacking the prosecution's case with long and aggressive examination and cross-examination of each witness. McNab also introduced more evidence about Rappe's lurid past and medical history. The prosecution's case was weakened because Prevon, a key witness, was out of the country after fleeing police custody and unable to testify.<ref name="trutv1"/> As in the first trial, Arbuckle testified as the final witness and maintained his denial of any wrongdoing. During closing statements, McNab reviewed the flaws in the case and attacked Brady for believing Delmont's outlandish charges, a woman whom McNab described as "the complaining witness who never witnessed." The jury began deliberations April 12 and took only six minutes to return with a unanimous not-guilty verdict. Five of those minutes were spent writing a formal statement of apology to Arbuckle for subjecting him to the ordeal, a dramatic and unusual gesture. The jury statement read:<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-09-27 |title=OPINION {{!}} OLD NEWS: Fatty Arbuckle found innocent after three trials; judgment came too late for his career |url=https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/sep/27/arbuckle-not-guilty-career-ruined/ |access-date=2023-09-02 |website=Arkansas Online |language=en}}</ref>

{{quotation|Acquittal is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel that a great injustice has been done him. We feel also that it was only our plain duty to give him this exoneration, under the evidence, for there was not the slightest proof adduced to connect him in any way with the commission of a crime. He was manly throughout the case and told a straightforward story on the witness stand, which we all believed. The happening at the hotel was an unfortunate affair for which Arbuckle, so the evidence shows, was in no way responsible. We wish him success and hope that the American people will take the judgment of fourteen men and woman who have sat listening for thirty-one days to evidence, that Roscoe Arbuckle is entirely innocent and free from all blame.}}

Some experts{{Who|date=October 2023}} later concluded that Rappe's bladder may have ruptured as a result of an abortion procedure that she may have undergone shortly before the party. However, her organs had been destroyed and it was now impossible to test her for pregnancy. Because alcohol was consumed at the party, Arbuckle pled guilty to one count of violating the [[Volstead Act]] and was ordered to pay a $500 fine ({{Inflation|US|500|1922|r=-3|fmt=eq}}). At the time of his acquittal, he owed more than $700,000 (equivalent to ${{Inflation|US|.7|1922|r=0}}&nbsp;million in {{Inflation/year|US}}{{inflation-fn|US}}) in legal fees to his attorneys for the three criminal trials, and he was forced to sell his house and all of his cars to pay some of the debt.<ref name="trutv1"/>