Two years after being prosecuted for rape and sexual assault in New York, Harvey Weinstein appeared again in court. This time in Los Angeles. The former producer is accused by four women of similar crimes – two rapes and five sexual assaults – between 2004 and 2013.
This second trial was first seen as an accessory, the former boss of Miramax, 70 years old, having already been sentenced to twenty-three years in prison in New York in March 2020. But since the president of the court appeals of the State agreed, at the end of August, to examine its recourse in appeal, in contradiction with the decision, in June, of a lower court, the procedure of Los Angeles gained in importance. The New York Court of Appeals has the power to order a new trial.
Incarcerated since his conviction at the high security prison of Alden, in the State of New York, Weinstein was transferred on July 20, 2021 to the Twin Towers Jail, the county prison of Los Angeles. After two weeks of jury selection – nine men, three women – the trial began on October 24. About fifty witnesses were heard, including four female victims of assaults not included in the proceedings because they had taken place in Puerto Rico, London and Toronto, but summoned by the prosecution to illustrate the behavior of “predator” of Weinstein, as Assistant District Attorney Marlene Martinez put it. “A degenerate rapist who used his power to prey on women,” she described November 30 in her closing statement.
The man who shook Hollywood attended the hearings in a wheelchair. No more than in New York, he did not wish to plead his case himself. He faces sixty years in prison, which would be added to the sentence imposed in New York.
Again, the defense argued that the interactions were consensual and “transactional”, victims acceding to solicitations from Weinstein to promote their careers. In some cases, meetings “didn’t even happen at all”, has said Mark Werksman, the former producer’s lead attorney. In its conclusions, the 1er December, his colleague Alan Jackson called on the jurors to consider the physical evidence of the charges rather than taking the tearful plaintiffs at their word. “Tears don’t tell the truth”he launched.
“He could make your career or ruin it”
Harvey Weinstein is being sued by four women named in the filing as Jane Doe 1, 2, 3, 4 out of respect for their privacy. The first, an Italian model, said he angrily knocked on her room door at the Mr. C Hotel in Beverly Hills in February 2013 while she was in Hollywood for a film festival transalpine. Paralyzed with fear, she thought he was going to kill her. He raped her and forced her to perform oral sex. She felt guilty for years for opening the door.
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