Grotesque Harvey Weinstein needs to be cleared of prices of raping an aspiring actress — even when Manhattan jurors are skeeved out by the convicted intercourse pest, his lawyer argued Tuesday.
“We’re not right here asking you to love Harvey Weinstein,” the despised defendant’s lawyer, Jacob Kaplan, stated throughout opening statements on the third metropolis sex-crimes trial involving the decrepit, deathly pale, wheelchair-bound, 74-year-old former movie bigwig and his accuser, Jessica Mann.
“This case is about proof, not reputation,” Kaplan stated.
However prosecutors once more portrayed the onetime Hollywood kingmaker as a predator who lured susceptible girls into his twisted net with guarantees to advance their careers, earlier than sexually assaulting them.
“This case will come all the way down to energy, to regulate and to manipulation,” Assistant District Legal professional Candace White advised jurors — as her boss, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, watched on from the courtroom gallery.
Weinstein, who has been held in metropolis and state custody since his 2018 arrest on numerous prices, faces one rely of third-degree rape for allegedly assaulting Mann in a 2013 encounter at a Manhattan resort.
The disgraced mogul was initially convicted of raping Mann and forcing oral intercourse on former “Undertaking Runaway” manufacturing Assistant Mimi Haley at his first Manhattan sex-crimes trial in 2020.
However New York’s highest courtroom ended up overturning that responsible verdict, so the previous Miramax boss — who produced flick hits comparable to “Shakespeare in Love” and “Pulp Fiction” — was placed on trial for the circumstances a second time final summer season.
Jurors on the re-trial convicted him once more of the Haley cost however couldn’t determine on the Mann rap after a tumultuous week of deliberations.
So prosecutors are going after him but once more over Mann — hoping the third time’s the attraction and can garner them a conviction that sticks.
Mann, now 41, plans to testify about how Weinstein allegedly compelled her to have intercourse on the Doubletree Resort in Midtown on March 18, 2013 — together with her discovering the then-married onetime film honcho’s gross erection-inducing drug injector needle within the trash afterward.
Weinstein’s legal professionals revisited his longtime protection within the case throughout opening statements — insisting his accusers have been wrongfully re-characterizing “consensual” encounters as intercourse crimes years later.
“It was her option to make, and she or he made that alternative time and again for the following 4 years,” Kaplan advised the jury of seven males and 5 girls in regards to the intercourse encounters between Weinstein and Mann.
Sporting a darkish blue swimsuit and American flag pin and together with his tie barely askew Tuesday, Weinstein flashed a faint thumb’s as much as his legal professionals and PR rep as courtroom officers rolled him into the room by way of a aspect door earlier than the continuing.
He already faces as much as 25 years in jail when he’s sentenced on the cost of forcing Haley into oral intercourse.
As a result of the max sentence on the pending third-degree rape cost is simply 4 years comparatively, the end result of the trial taking place now will not be anticipated to meaningfully influence his jail sentence.
Weinstein has individually been convicted of raping an Italian mannequin in California and was sentenced to serve 16 years behind bars in that case.
Regardless of his responsible verdicts, the jailed ex-tycoon maintains that he by no means raped anybody.
“I admit my ethical failings — I used to be untrue and acted wrongly — however I’ve by no means assaulted anybody,” he stated at a Manhattan pre-trial look in January.
