Opening statements began in Harvey Weinstein’s rape retrial, five years after his original trial delivered a searing reckoning for him one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures.
The case is being retried because an appeals court threw out the 2020 conviction.
The retrial is happening at the same Manhattan courthouse as the first trial, and two accusers who gave evidence then are expected to return.
Weinstein’s retrial is playing out at a different cultural moment than the first, which happened during the height of the #MeToo movement.
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Along with the charges being retried, he faces an additional allegation from a woman who was not involved in the first case.
The jury counts seven women and five men, unlike the seven-man, five-woman panel that convicted him in 2020. There is also a different judge.
The #MeToo movement, which exploded in 2017 with allegations against Weinstein, has evolved and ebbed.
At the start of Weinstein’s first trial, chants of “rapist” could be heard from protesters outside.
TV lorries lined the street, and reporters queued for hours to get a seat in the packed courtroom.
His lawyers decried the “carnival-like atmosphere” and fought unsuccessfully to get the trial moved from Manhattan.
This time, over five days of jury selection, there was none of that.
Weinstein (73) is being retried on a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcibly performing oral sex on a movie and TV production assistant, Miriam Haley, in 2006 and a third-degree rape charge for allegedly assaulting an aspiring actor, Jessica Mann, in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013.
Weinstein also faces a criminal sex act charge for allegedly forcing oral sex on a different woman at a Manhattan hotel in 2006.
Prosecutors said that woman, who has not been named publicly, came forward days before his first trial but was not part of that case.
They said they revisited her allegations when his conviction was thrown out.
Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone.
Lindsay Goldbrum, a lawyer for the unnamed accuser, said Weinstein’s retrial marks a “pivotal moment in the fight for accountability in sex abuse cases” and a “signal to other survivors that the system is catching up — and that it’s worth speaking out even when the odds seem insurmountable”.
This time around, the Manhattan district attorney’s office is prosecuting Weinstein through its special victims division, which specialises in such cases. Homicide veterans helmed the 2020 version.
At the same time, Weinstein has added several lawyers to his defence team, including Jennifer Bonjean, who is involved in appealing his 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles.
She helped Bill Cosby get his conviction overturned and defended R Kelly in his sex crimes case.
“This trial is not going to be all about #MeToo ... It’s going to be about the facts of what took place,” Weinstein’s lead lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said recently.
“And that’s a big deal ... And that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
But there has already been some talk of #MeToo.
A prosecutor asked prospective jurors whether they had heard of the movement. Most said they had, but that it would not affect them either way.
Others went further. A woman opined that “not enough has been done” as a result of #MeToo.
A man explained that he had negative feelings about it because his high school classmates had been falsely accused of sexual assault.
Another man said he viewed #MeToo like other social movements: “It’s a pendulum. It swings way one way, then way the other way, and then it settles.”
None of them is on the jury. -Associated Press
