SAN JOSE — An emotional showdown in the jury room where one holdout juror complained of being bullied and refused to deliberate Thursday led to a mistrial in the case of San Jose State’s former head athletic trainer accused of sexually assaulting female athletes during treatment sessions.
The overwhelming majority of the jurors, at least 10 of the 12, believed Scott Shaw was guilty, the jury foreman told the judge in court Thursday, but one juror in particular — a 53-year-old woman who is an engineer — didn’t believe federal prosecutors had proven their case.
At the lowest point of deliberations, that juror later told the Bay Area News Group, one of the jurors had questioned her “mental state.”
The dramatic and abrupt ending capped a two-week trial and threw into question the criminal case at the heart of a 14-year saga that rocked San Jose State University and toppled the school’s leaders.
One of the former athletes who testified, former swimmer Caitlin Macky, who was the first to complain about Shaw in 2009, said she felt a combination of “anger and hopelessness” at the mistrial.
“It’s 12-plus years of emotions, coming down to 12 strangers deciding whether or not they believe you,” she said. “It’s very disheartening.”
In an interview with the Bay Area News Group outside the courtroom, the presiding juror, Jeff Pickett, a 48-year-old product marketer, said it was clear within the first 20 minutes of deliberations on Monday that the holdout juror was “intractable.”
“We did some mental gymnastics and all those things right to work around it,” Pickett said. “But we never got to the starting blocks.”
The jury deadlocked after four days of deliberations, which included several notes sent to U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman, who told the jurors at one point not to “bully or antagonize” each other.
Shaw had pleaded not guilty to six federal charges of violating the constitutional right to “bodily integrity” of four former athletes. He faced up to six years in prison.
After the judge declared a mistrial Thursday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Pitman said his office would review whether to retry the case.
Shaw, 56, who resigned in 2020 a decade after complaints against him first emerged, hugged his mother when the jury left the courtroom, and the two broke into tears. He had declined all interviews since the scandal first broke, but after the jury left the courtroom he told the Bay Area News Group he was grateful to his lawyers and friends and “especially my mom being here this whole time.”
When asked if he had anything to say to the women who accused him of sexually assaulting them by inappropriately putting his hands under their sports bras and underwear, he said “no.”
Allegations first surfaced against Shaw in 2009 when a member of the Spartan swim team told her coach that she didn’t want to go back to Shaw for a shoulder injury: “I don’t feel like getting felt up.”
The resulting scandal that became public in 2020 led to the resignations of the university president and athletic director and more than $5 million in legal settlements for more than two dozen victims as well as a wholesale restructuring of the school’s Title IX office.
In a statement Thursday, the university said that “while the lack of a verdict and definitive resolution is disappointing, it does not diminish the pain endured by the survivors. … What’s never been in question is the resilience and bravery of those who stood up to tell their stories.”
Sage Hopkins, the whistleblowing swim coach who kept up a decade-long crusade to oust Shaw and sat in the courtroom nearly every day to support the women who testified, called the mistrial “disappointing and absolutely heartbreaking for the victims.” He also praised the “bravery of the eight women who testified at the trial.”
Over two weeks of testimony, eight former female athletes, many of whom broke into tears, testified how they were “internally freaking out,” “frozen” or had “every alarm” going off when Shaw touched them under their bras and underwear while treating shoulder, back or knee injuries. Other athletic trainers testified they never touched female athletes the way Shaw did, and former male athletes testified that Shaw didn’t come close to their nipples or groins to treat similar injuries.
From interviews with several of the jurors outside the courtroom Thursday, it was clear most of them were prepared to find Shaw guilty on all six counts. On one of the charges, the vote was 11-1, they told the judge. The remaining five charges were 10-2, when another female juror joined Juror No. 1, the holdout, who spoke to the Bay Area News Group but asked not to be named.
Tempers got so short, she said, that the others told her they wanted her off the jury.
After the judge had admonished the jury not to bully anyone, one of the jury members questioned her mental state, the woman said. So she zipped her lips for the rest of the day. She wasn’t going to give in, though, she said, because she didn’t believe she had enough details of where Shaw actually touched the women on their breasts.
The other jurors said that was very clear in the testimony, that he touched at least one of the women’s nipples and areola — and even had the court clerk read back the entire testimony of one of the former athletes.
Juror No. 8, who didn’t want to be identified but said she believed Shaw was guilty, said testimony from three male athletes who said Shaw never touched them in their private areas was “pretty damning.”
“A miscarriage of justice happened here,” the juror said.
Macky, now 34 and working as a nutrition coach in San Diego, said she and her fellow former athletes were texting each other after the mistrial was announced, “sharing our love for each other and letting each other know that we’re proud of ourselves for having the courage to stand up.”
She’s especially enraged, she said, because unlike some of the school officials who resigned over the scandal, “Shaw got off free without taking any accountability.”
Although this trial is over, she said, she was already asked late Thursday afternoon by her victim advocate whether she would testify if there’s a new trial.
“I absolutely would,” Macky said. “I’ve gone 12 years trying to get the truth out there about this person. Certainly I’m not going to stop now.”