Russell Brand Has Been Found Guilty. American Courts Could Learn a Lot From His Trial

Britain’s most notorious serial killers and infamous gangsters are convicted at London’s Old Bailey, under a neo-Baroque dome and gold-gilded statue of Lady Justice. But it is Southwark Crown Court, an entirely bland heap of 1980s bricks by the River Thames, where the embattled entertainers wash up.

Only recently, this is where rapper Chris Brown—who pleaded guilty to affray after striking a man in the head with a glass bottle in a nightclub—learned he would avoid prison. It is also where Russell Brand today was found guilty of one count of rape and three of sexual assault. He was found not guilty of two other counts of rape and one count of attempted indecent assault.

The week before, whilst reporting on Brand’s trial, I watched a fan in the corridor outside the courtroom admiringly accost the comedian. “I’ve been told to tell you there are many who support you,” she told him. He gave a zen reply: “I receive it, I receive it.” But by and large, English courts are not interested in fame.

In England, the court is an uncontaminated information space: There are no cameras to broadcast what happens inside, and there are strict rules to marshal what information can come in. It may be one of the few places on earth where an influencer can no longer influence; even Katy Perry, Brand’s ex-wife, had to be explained to the judge. In 2026, the closest the US has come to creating a similar environment is Taylor Swift’s wedding.

In a world of video clips, this courtroom is unclippable. What happens here is beyond the reach of rubbernecking pundits or home sleuths wanting a hot take for their socials. Unlike in modern discourse, there are rules in this court, and they are strictly enforced: Complainants in sexual cases are entitled to immediate and lifelong anonymity in the UK. Their real names and identifying details were heard in court—but mention them outside, and you risk arrest for contempt of court. Here, the defense also must ask the judge’s permission to bring up the accusers’ sexual history. When it was suspected that one blogger may have crossed the line, the judge barked at the lead prosecutor: “You’ve plenty of police officers back there…. Send one to arrest him!” They promptly did, and he was ultimately released with a caution.

Jurors, too, can never be unmasked, and their deliberations are forever secret. I sat watching them throughout the trial, but can never tell you what I observed.

From the initial charging to the conclusion of the trial, we in the British media are limited to reporting fairly and accurately only what the jury hears each day. Anyone weighing in publicly with an opinion, a prediction, or anything that could create a “substantial risk of serious prejudice or impediment” to the trial risks joining Brand in the dock of a criminal court. This meant there was no spin as Brand stepped down from the witness stand—no online reprisals against his accusers.

In court, Brand described himself as someone who had once been “staggeringly” famous. His defense argued that, in 2023, reporting from Channel 4, The Times, and The Sunday Times alleging sexual misbehavior changed that—and made everyone desert him. This, Brand said, is why only three witnesses were called to support him—two, if you exclude his wife.

“It’s not the case you’ve been completely abandoned,” wily prosecutor Riel Karmy-Jones stated in cross-examination on October 28. Eight seconds of silent staring was Brand’s reply.

“You have a platform with followers in the millions, don’t you?” Silence.

“Yes,” he eventually returned, albeit quietly. Even Harold Pinter would have shouted, “Get on with it.”

The 2.2 million who follow Brand on Rumble and 6.6 million who subscribe to his YouTube channel must have fringe tastes. Brand now mixes prayer and conspiracy theory on Rumble livestreams, hawking adaptogenic mushroom supercoffee and more. His schtick seems increasingly detached from reality: He’s not just claiming that autism diagnoses are rising because of vaccines to create a “population incapable of personal sovereignty,” but he’s also suggesting that his rape and sexual assault allegations were suspiciously timed—implying the campaign against him is the work of a shadowy psy-ops division of the British army linked to a lawmaker who once questioned whether he should be demonetized by some social media platforms.

Keeping up? To follow any of this is to wade through a thicket of non-sequitur arguments, florid vocabulary and, in his latest twist, the Gospels.

How has Brand’s flimflam, wrapped up in the needy personality of an entertainer who lives off clicks, landed in England’s criminal court system? Uncomfortably, I would say. Southwark is dilapidated and definitely analogue. The litigators wore robes and horsehair wigs, and the microphone on the prosecutor’s lectern was held in place with an enormous amount of yellow and black hazard duct tape. The lights went out twice because of a power cut.

If the world is now video-first, our courts are video-last. With the occasional exception of a judge’s sentencing remarks, nothing in court is photographed, filmed, or recorded for the media. Even the court artist can only take written notes, and must do their actual sketches outside.

“It’s not theater,” I heard the court clerk tell a law student who’d come to watch Brand’s trial but was annoyed to find the six public seats were full.

If this case had been undertaken in Brand’s adopted home of Florida, everyone’s evidence would have been tailored to win over cable news panel pundits. Soundbites would trump reasoned long-form arguments. The names of his accusers would likely be public—as would anything else anyone could dig up about them. Did the framers of the American Constitution really want @truecrimesleuthboy unpicking old Facebook albums of women alleging rape, or network news cameras hounding jurors on their decision?

Did you watch the Amber Heard–versus–Johnny Depp defamation trial in 2022? Were you one of the billions using #AmberTurd online as the “courtroom porn,” as Monica Lewinsky called it for Vanity Fair, was dissected, criticized, and memed? After her defeat, Heard’s lawyer spoke out in frustration: “There’s no way couldn’t have been influenced” by the online discussion, she said. “It was horrible.”

Because of where Brand’s trial took place, his testimony could never have been turned into a similar show. In Court 3, there was no camera awaiting his reactions to what he was allegedly being subjected to. Maybe that’s why he didn’t try to pull any of that.

Brand did arrive at court with a Holy Bible bursting with index tabs. One day, when stuck in the corridor with the assembled press pack, he also uncomfortably boomed out, “This is a great day.” But for the most part, I observed him sitting tall and still and lonely in the dock. His personal bodyguard dozed in the courtroom’s family and friends section as an assistant scrolled through her phone and his father demolished a Snickers.

The only sign his group was listening to the awful things their friend/boss/son was being accused of was the very active facial expressions of Brand’s wife, Laura. “Oh, come on,” she appeared to mouth on one occasion, listening to one woman alleging rape.

There was no sign of Brand the comedian or Brand the YouTuber when the defendant took to the witness stand—though he did begin his testimony defiantly, answering the first question with a “No” so loud he seemed to shock even himself. From then on, he diminuendoed so far that the judge jumped in: “You are starting to drop your voice.”

Brand’s silences began when prosecution advocate Karmy-Jones took to her feet. A distinguished prosecutor and defender, she’s worked with and around murderers, sex offenders, and organized crooks. She’s also done time with terrible showoffs, having begun her career as a theater director. Kristin Scott Thomas or a young Lauren Bacall might play her in the film version of the trial.

Karmy-Jones was achingly polite as she unpicked what Brand called his “escalating recollection” of events. In four police interviews across 18 months, claimed Brand, he had no memory of the six women accusing him—even when given photographs, names, and some details. The British version of the Miranda warning tells suspects under caution, “You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court.”

According to the police tapes, so-called Woman 3 did not ring a bell for him back then. But in the witness box, Brand described meeting her at a bar, recalling that a friend had said something like, “There’s a bird here who really wants to meet you.” He remembered that she had “prominent eyes,” was “lithe, elfic, pixyish,” and consented to go to the toilet for “kissing..fondling.” He was found guilty of sexually assaulting her, and acquitted on that charge of rape.

“Are you sure you aren’t piecing an account together from the evidence that was served?” Karmy-Jones asked.

Maybe the lack of spotlight and vodcaster microphone lowered his guard. This proud wordsmith did not seem ready for his words to be used against him. He wouldn’t have sexually assaulted a woman he was flirting with, Brand said. He would have been “complimentary, flirtatious, tactile.” Yet when Brand tried to drift into generalities, he was dragged back to specifics.

“What was the flirting?”

“I’ve said—”

“Repeat it”

“If I…”

“Not if you met someone, Mr Brand. What was the conversation you had?” What did he mean when he said he would have been “tactile?” “Tactile means touch,” was his gently smug reply.

“Indeed it does,” Karmy-Jones returned, dragging him back to the allegation that he had grabbed the woman’s breasts.

When was the last time Brand had been spoken to like this? He did not seem to enjoy it. He even conceded there were “small details” in his evidence “that are inconsistent, and I acknowledge that.”

Perhaps you can see why Brand and his advocates didn’t attempt any “this is a deep state conspiracy sparked by my client’s vlogging about Pfizer” material on the witness stand. During the trial, he somehow managed to maneuver himself into a difficult position: insisting that despite not remembering it previously, he did have a conversation with Woman 5 about consent in which she agreed to unprotected anal sex, even though she’d just insisted their consensual vaginal sex involve a condom. “Nonsense, wasn’t it, Mr. Brand?” asked Karmy-Jones. The jury must have agreed. Brand was found guilty of this charge.

The jury was given the space to examine all this without any public discourse crowding their own thoughts out of their head. And it’s clear to the rest of us that this is preferable: A Gallup poll this year suggested just 17% of Americans have confidence in their criminal justice system. Compare that to the latest Crime Survey for England and Wales, which found 48% have confidence in how criminal justice is administered.

Our courts need physical repair, better pay, more money generally. But the fundamentals are right and working.

On one of the last days of the Brand trial, I left the court building and recognized one of the jurors standing in front of me. They had their coat on, a bag on their shoulder, and were stepping out into a cold London evening totally anonymously. A thick gaggle of paparazzi, waiting for Russell and co., were lined up at the boundary. The juror slipped through without a single flashbulb going off, without a single paparazzo glancing or realizing this person might be someone worth photographing. That is exactly how it should be.