This is the second trial of the former magnate of the seventh art. Fallen film producer Harvey Weinstein whose actions with women sparked the #MeToo movement in October 2017, appears from Monday, October 10 in a court in Los Angeles (California), to answer new charges of sexual assault. The hearing will begin with the selection of jurors.
What are the challenges of this new appointment with justice, scheduled to last two months? Franceinfo answers three questions about the trial.
Who are the accusers?
Harvey Weinstein, 70, is being sued by five women, who accuse him of sexual assault and rape at hotels in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills during meetings between 2004 and 2013. One of them is a Italian model, who claims she was raped at a Beverly Hills hotel in February 2013. Lauren Young, an aspiring actress, accuses him of having sexually assaulted her in the bathroom of another hotel. The latter is the only accuser not to be anonymous in this case. She had previously testified at the New York trial.
As Variety explains, four other women will testify about similar assaults. Enough to allow the prosecution to put forward a modus operandi. According to the US magazine, one such prosecution witness is Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, the Italian model and actress who first reported Weinstein to the New York Police Department in March 2015. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office had chosen not to prosecute Harvey Weinstein for these facts, arousing many criticisms. The Los Angeles trial will be his first opportunity to testify publicly.
As in New York, Harvey Weinstein pleads not guilty and claims that these women were consenting.
What penalty does he incur?
Harvey Weinstein faces 11 charges of rape and sexual assault. If convicted, the former tycoon faces up to 140 years in prison. The sentence would be in addition to the 23 years in prison pronounced in March 2020 in New York. His lawyers had asked, in vain, for the postponement of the trial in Los Angeles, due to the November release of the film She Said, adaptation of the journalists’ book New York Times, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, who revealed the whole affair five years ago. According to the defence, the media coverage around this work could “injure” to the accused.
Harvey Weinstein was transferred in July 2021 from the Wende Jail in upstate New York to the Twin Towers Jail in Los Angeles County. At the impeachment hearing this summer, the Hollywood reigning supreme appeared in a wheelchair, looking scruffy, wearing a brown jumpsuit and wearing a mask under his nose. In September, he asked the judge to allow him to see a private dentist to avoid having his spoiled teeth pulled by prison doctors and to be presentable at his trial. “I’m in pain every day. I have cavities and I can’t eat because I’m missing teeth”said the former film producer, according to the New York Post.
What other procedures are in progress?
Harvey Weinstein’s appeal in the New York trial was finally ruled admissible in late August by the state’s highest court, after a first rejection by a lower appeals court. “Questions of law are at stake and must be examined by the court of appeal”, ruled the New York justice. Lawyers for the ex-tycoon argued that jurors at the trial in New York were overwhelmed by “bad evidence” and that a juror who had written a book on “predatory men” should have been discarded. “If this first trial is canceled, it would not be a good signal”dreads with franceinfo one of his accusers, actress Caitlin Dulany, recalling that the conviction for sexual assault of actor Bill Cosby was canceled in July 2021 for procedural flaws.
Other lawsuits also target Harvey Weinstein abroad. He is charged in the UK for two sexual assaults dating back to the summer of 1996. According to the Guardian, the complainant is a woman, now 50 years old. It is not known whether the seventy-year-old will be extradited and tried by a British criminal court, the daily specifies.