NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 After years of #MeToo infamy, legal peril and prison, Harvey Weinstein is again going on trial on a rape charge in New York City.<\/p>\n
Jury selection was set to start Tuesday in the onetime movie mogul’s latest retrial, where jurors will weigh \u2014 for the third time \u2014 whether he raped hairstylist and actor\u00a0Jessica Mann\u00a0in a Manhattan hotel in 2013.<\/p>\n
This time, jurors will consider only one charge based on one accuser, rather than the array of allegations that were aired at Weinstein\u2019s previous trials in New York and Los Angeles. The Oscar-winning producer denies all the accusations and\u00a0declared in court\u00a0this winter that he had \u201cacted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Prosecutors might also seek to introduce new evidence. After Weinstein arrived in court Tuesday, but before jury selection began, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Candace White told the judge that prosecutors might seek to include testimony from a court security officer about something Weinstein allegedly said six years ago.<\/p>\n
According to White, the officer said he was on hand for Weinstein\u2019s\u00a0February 2020 sexual assault conviction\u00a0\u2014 which was later overturned \u2014 and heard Weinstein say: \u201cIf you had seen these girls, you would have done the exact same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weinstein\u2019s lawyers urged Judge Curtis Farber to keep any mention of the supposed remark out of his upcoming retrial.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just too late\u201d to introduce such a thing, defense attorney Marc Agnifilo said. The judge hasn\u2019t yet ruled.<\/p>\n
The judge has revisited some rulings about exactly what evidence gets presented about Weinstein\u2019s and Mann\u2019s years of interactions. For example, the judge indicated Tuesday he may curb discussion of an erectile-dysfunction drug that Mann said Weinstein used.<\/p>\n
There also may not be any mention of a claims fund that was set up for women who said Weinstein sexually mistreated them, partly because the defense team doesn\u2019t intend to raise the subject, Farber said.<\/p>\n
And Weinstein\u2019s recent change in attorneys could shift the trial\u2019s tenor and tactics.<\/p>\n
A new defense team<\/p>\n
Agnifilo and his partners\u00a0took on the case\u00a0in February, when longtime Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala stepped aside from the retrial to focus on the former studio boss\u2019 appeals and civil matters. Both Aidala and Agnifilo are well-known New York defense attorneys, but their litigation styles differ. Aidala is folksy, while Agnifilo is more buttoned-up.<\/p>\n
Weinstein wielded significant clout in the entertainment industry, having built his reputation on such critical and popular hits as \u201cShakespeare in Love,\u201d \u201cPulp Fiction\u201d and \u201cChocolat.\u201d He also became a\u00a0prominent Democratic donor.<\/p>\n
Then a series of sexual harassment and sex assault allegations against Weinstein began to emerge in news media in 2017, propelling the #MeToo movement.<\/p>\n
He was criminally charged in New York in 2018 and in Los Angeles two years later.<\/p>\n
A tangled series of trials<\/p>\n
Weinstein went to trial and was convicted of some \u2014 but not all \u2014 counts in both cases. His initial New York convictions\u00a0were overturned,\u00a0spurring a retrial last year.<\/p>\n
The retrial verdict was mixed: Weinstein was\u00a0convicted of forcing\u00a0oral sex on production assistant and producer\u00a0Miriam Haley\u00a0in 2006, but he was acquitted of forcibly performing oral sex that same year on model-turned-psychotherapist\u00a0Kaja Sokola. The jury didn\u2019t decide on the rape charge involving Mann because the\u00a0foreperson refused to keep deliberating.<\/p>\n
Weinstein subsequently\u00a0considered pleading guilty, according to Aidala. Evidently, Weinstein ultimately rejected the idea.<\/p>\n
Mann has testified that she had a consensual, on-and-off relationship with the then-married Weinstein. But when he cornered her in a Manhattan hotel room where she was staying on a weekend getaway, she protested, \u201cI don\u2019t want to do this,\u201d she told jurors. She said he kept making advances and demands until she \u201cjust gave up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Weinstein hasn\u2019t testified at any of his trials, but his lawyers have contended that he never had non-consensual sex.<\/p>\n
The defense claimed that Mann and his other accusers willingly entertained his sexual overtures because they wanted his help with their show-business aspirations. The women, by contrast, said Weinstein dangled his Hollywood influence to draw them into his orbit and then victimize them.<\/p>\n
His sexual assault conviction involving Haley carries\u00a0the potential for up to 25 years\u00a0in prison; no sentencing date has been set.<\/p>\n
In this case, the rape charge is a lower-level felony punishable by up to four years behind bars. Weinstein, 73, already has served longer than that.<\/p>\n
Weinstein has various health problems and uses a wheelchair. He\u00a0told the judge\u00a0in January that he\u2019s haunted by the possibility that he might die in New York\u2019s notorious\u00a0Rikers Island jail.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy mental state is collapsing. \u2026 My spirit is breaking,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Weinstein\u2019s lawyers have argued that his New York conviction last year was poisoned by bad blood among jurors. Meanwhile, he\u2019s appealing\u00a0the Los Angeles verdict.<\/p>\n
The Associated Press generally does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted. Haley, Mann and Sokola agreed to be named.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 After years of #MeToo infamy, legal peril and prison, Harvey Weinstein is again going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":197468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-197467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}