'Hated by many': Trump jurors warned their lives have been changed forever

The lives of the jurors who convicted Donald Trump are forever changed, former panel members in other high-profile cases warned them Friday.

Jurors who sat for the trials of O.J. Simpson, Michael Jackson and Harvey Weinstein told The Daily Beast they have been hounded by reporters, offered book deals and faced venomous hatred.

They've also had to deal with stress that comes with the civic duty of deciding another person's fate — particularly when the whole world is watching the outcome.

“You’re always being judged by someone,” said Yolanda Crawford, who was 25 years old when she voted to acquit Simpson for the killing of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.

“If someone found out that I was on that case, I had to hear about it and get their opinion. Not that it was warranted, or that I wanted it, but everyone had an opinion on the case, whether it was the same as mine or different from mine. I always felt judged by it.”

Crawford, who is now 54 and still lives in Southern California, said she still regularly receives hateful messages online and gets angry letters from people who think she and the other jurors were wrong.

“I could say that I’m hated by many,” said Crawford, who had been the youngest juror on the panel.

The names of Trump's jurors have been fiercely protected by the court during the trial, but some will likely choose to speak about their decision to find the former president guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records, experts say.

ALSO READ: Political polls are way better than you think. Here’s how to improve them more.

“There will be scrutiny no matter what the verdict is, but a guilty verdict would put jurors at greater risk of scrutiny as the former president is already challenging the fairness of the system and the jurors,” said professional trial consultant Jill Huntley Taylor before the verdict was handed down. “Jurors may be less likely to come forward publicly if they find Trump guilty.”

Ray Hultman served on the jury in Michael Jackson's 2005 sexual abuse trial and later wrote a book about their decision to acquit the pop star. While he found the experience cathartic, he has made little money from it.

“It’s not a money-making proposition at all,” said Hultman, who said he's sold fewer than 100 copies since publishing Diary of Juror No. 1 in May 2021.

“It had a big impact on me, personally,” Hultman added. “It wasn’t one of those ethereal things that’s here today, gone tomorrow. It’s like OK, it happened, and I won’t forget that it happened — at all.”

As the 30th anniversary of the Brown Simpson and Goldman killings looms next month, and Simpson himself died in April from cancer, Crawford said the trial still hangs over her life.

“I thought that now that he’s gone, I would’ve thought that it would be over,” she told the reporter. “But now we have Trump, and you’re definitely not the first person to want me to talk about that.”