An attorney for the Miramax Films co-founder argued the trial judge excluded evidence crucial to the defense’s theory that the purported victim was with her lover the night she claimed Weinstein raped her.
LOS ANGELES (CN) — Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein asked a California Court of Appeals panel on Thursday to overturn his conviction for raping an Italian model in her hotel room when she was visiting a film festival in Los Angeles in 2013.
Jennifer Bonjean, Weinstein’s attorney, argued at the Second Appellate District hearing in downtown LA that the judge presiding over the 2022 trial had wrongly excluded evidence in support of her client’s innocence — in particular, communications between the Italian woman, only identified as Jane Doe in court, and the organizer of the LA Italia Film Festival that showed they had a sexual relationship.
“Simply put, the lower court all but gutted Mr. Weinstein’s defense,” Bonjean told the three-judge panel.
The explicit text messages between Doe and Pascal Vicedomini, both before and after the festival in February 2013, according to the attorney, showed that they were more than just friends, as they had represented at trial, but were in a sexual relationship.
If the jury would have had this information in what Bonjean said was a very close trial, they might have assumed Doe was with her lover when she claimed that Weinstein burst in her room and sexually assaulted her. It would also undermine the purported suggestion by the prosecution that Vicedomini had told Weinstein where the woman was staying, she said.
Associate Justice Gregory Weingart noted, however, that Weinstein’s trial lawyers hadn’t tried to introduce into evidence the messages Doe and Vicedomini exchanged months after the festival, which according to Bonjean showed the two were together on the morning that she said Weinstein raped her.
“Those only came up at the new trial motion,” Weingart pointed out. “They were not offered into evidence as far as I can tell.”
Bonjean, in response, claimed Weinstein’s trial attorneys had brought up these later messages in the context of Vicedomini’s so-called conditional examination — where a witness is questioned under oath in case they can’t appear in person to testify at the trial — but hadn’t pursued the argument because the trial judge had already indicated that she would only admit a small, “sanitized” part of the earlier exchanges.
Weinstein, 74, became the poster child of the #metoo movement in 2017 when numerous women, including movie actresses, came forward with claims he had sexually assaulted them.
A California jury convicted him if raping the Italian model after barging in her hotel room. The jury deadlocked on additional charges that Weinstein had raped Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom, when she was an aspiring filmmaker and that he had sexual assaulted an aspiring screenwriter. They acquitted him of sexual assaulting a massage therapist in his hotel room.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Judge Lisa Lench sentenced him to 16 years in prison — eight years for forcible rape, six years for forcible oral copulation, and two years for sexual penetration by a foreign object, the three counts he was found guilty of, to be served consecutively.
Bonjean also argued the the judge had erred by allowing the jury to hear the conditional examination of Vicedomini in violation of Weinstein’s Sixth Amendment right to confront the witness in court. The Italian film festival organizer presumably wasn’t able to travel because of a medical reason.
Associate Justice Helen Bendix noted, though, that California courts can’t force a witness from Italy to appear in person and that Weinstein’s defense would have needed his testimony if they wanted to persuade the jury that he had been Jane Doe’s lover and that, as such, he wouldn’t have wanted to tell Weinstein in which hotel she was staying.
“I don’t understand why you are objecting to the conditional examination — you needed him,” Bendix said. “You were trying to express to the jury your theory of the case that she was sleeping with him on that night and not with your client.”
California Deputy Attorney General David Glassman told the panel Weinstein’s attorney was entirely wrong in suggesting that the defense was precluded from introducing their theory that Doe and Vicedomini were in a relationship and were together the morning after Weinstein had assaulted her.
“The entire dynamic between her and Vicedomini, which is irrelevant to this case, was aired to the jury,” Glassman said, citing passages from Weinstein’s trial attorney’s closing statement.
Separately, a New York jury last year reached a partial verdict in Weinstein’s retrial, convicting him on one criminal sex charge against former production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haley and acquitting him on another charge of the same crime against model Kaja Sokola.
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