Over 5 years after Harvey Weinstein‘s earlier New York Metropolis intercourse crimes trial noticed the as soon as highly effective producer sentenced to 23 years behind bars, the a lot accused Weinstein’s retrial for rape and sexual assault will get underway this morning in a Manhattan courtroom.
Less than 24 hours after the jury was seated Tuesday, opening statements will probably be delivered at the moment beginning at 6:30 am PT/9:30 am ET to a panel of seven girls and 5 males.
Just like the Large Apple jury earlier than it 5 years in the past and a Los Angeles jury in 2022, the jury Wednesday will start the method of listening to the arguments and proof to determine the guilt or innocence of the Oscar winner for Shakespeare in Love. If discovered responsible once more, the ailing 72-year-old Weinstein, who saw his previous conviction tossed out in April 2024 over controversial prior bad acts testimony, will doubtless spend the remainder of his life in a state jail.
After seeing their profitable work in 2020 solid apart, the Manhattan District Lawyer’s workplace are once more portray Weinstein as a serial predator. As they’ve earlier than, the prosecution will inform this jury that Weinstein for many years used his dominant place in Hollywood to assault and abuse girls within the trade after which purchase their silence with intimidation, cash and NDAs.
In contrast to 2020, Weinstein is going through three accusers in court docket this time.
Two are girls he was beforehand convicted of subjecting to sexual violence, Jessica Mann and Miriam Haley, earlier than these responsible verdicts — for rape and fee of a prison sexual act, respectively — had been overturned. An accusation from a 3rd, unnamed lady is the premise of a new grand jury indictment that was handed down in September, for a single rely of first-degree prison sexual act. The third lady is anticipated to testify that Weinstein pressured himself on her in a Manhattan resort room in 2006.
Amidst accusations, allegations and dozens of lawsuits over the previous eight years since his very public downfall, Weinstein has maintained that every one of his sexual encounters had been consensual. These assertions by Weinstein embrace these with a number of accusers who had by no means met one another giving very comparable graphic accounts, going again to the Nineteen Seventies, of rapes and assaults in resort rooms, in properties and through trade occasions.
Whispered about, these tales surfaced in 2017 in a pair of Pulitzer Prize-winning exposés by the New York Occasions and New Yorker journal. Opening a floodgate of misconduct, casting sofa and elsewhere, the items on Weinstein gave rise to a motion with #MeToo as its hashtag and Weinstein as Exhibit A. Greater than anybody, Weinstein got here to embody the determine of the highly effective, seemingly untouchable male predator lastly being referred to as out by his victims in an overdue reckoning for all abusers of ladies.
Now Weinstein’s authorized workforce, led by protection lawyer Arthur Aidala, have solid the overturning of the conviction as a step towards vindication. “We’re hopeful that this time, the authorized course of will rise above noise and narrative, and permit Harvey Weinstein the honest trial he’s lengthy been denied,” Weinstein consultant Juda Engelmayer instructed Deadline on April 22. “He deserves the possibility to clear his title and protect a legacy that has been overshadowed by deeply flawed and deceptive accusations.”
Similtaneously this East Coast trial is starting, Weinstein is interesting his 2022 conviction by a LA jury for raping and assaulting a lady, recognized solely as Jane Doe, in 2013.
The West Coast conviction has saved the Pulp Fiction producer incarcerated even after his jail sentence and conviction in New York was vacated. That court docket dominated 4-3 that the choose within the unique trial, James Burke, had unfairly prejudiced the jury in opposition to the defendant by permitting three extra girls to testify that Weinstein had assaulted them although their accusations weren’t contained within the unique indictment.
With now ex-Choose Burke not reappointed by Mayor Eric Adams’ workplace, the retrial will probably be overseen by Choose Curtis Farber. On the identical time, the prosecution may have a brand new workforce chief, Manhattan Assistant District Lawyer Nicole Blumberg, chief of the workplace’s Intimate Companions and Sexual Violence Bureau.
Out and in of hospitals the previous 5 years, Weinstein returns to court docket in New York a gaunter and paler model of his previous larger-than-life and loud self, having lately undergone therapy for most cancers and emergency heart and lung surgery. It’s unclear whether or not he’ll testify in his personal protection, which he didn’t do in both of his earlier prison trials in New York and Los Angeles. Enjoying to the drama, lawyer Aidala has stated he wouldn’t rule it out.
However, Mann, who was an aspiring actress, and Haley, who labored as a tv manufacturing assistant, are each anticipated to return to the stand within the retrial. That would imply a repeat of the graphic and emotionally grueling testimony that preceded Weinstein’s first conviction.
Choose Faber has stated that he hopes the trial will probably be over “by the tip of Might.”
