Already sentenced, in 2020, to a sentence of twenty-three years in prison in New York, the former producer of Hollywood is accused by four women of sexual assault before a court of Los Angeles.
by Corine Lesnes (San Francisco, correspondent)
What good is the same stories good? Two years after being prosecuted for rape and sexual assault in New York, Harvey Weinstein appeared again in court. This time, in Los Angeles. The former producer is accused by four women of similar crimes – two rapes and five sexual assaults – between 2004 and 2013.
This second trial had first been seen as an accessory, the former boss of Miramax, aged 70, having already been sentenced to twenty-three years in prison in New York in March 2020. But since the president From the State Court of Appeal agreed, at the end of August, to examine its appeal on appeal, in contradiction with the decision, in June, of a lower court, the Los Angeles procedure gained importance. The New York Court of Appeal has the power to order a new trial.
Incarcerated since his conviction in High Security Prison in Alden, in New York State, Weinstein was transferred on July 20, 2021 to the Twin Towers Jail, the County of Los Angeles. After two weeks of selection of jurors – nine men, three women – the trial began on October 24. About fifty witnesses have been heard, including four women victims of aggressions not included in the procedure because having taken place in Puerto Rico, London and Toronto, but summoned by the accusation to illustrate the behavior of “predator” of Weinstein, According to the expression of the assistant prosecutor Marlene Martinez. “A degenerate rapist who used his power to tackle women,” she described on November 30 in her indictment.
The man who was shaking Hollywood attended the audiences in a wheelchair. Nor to New York, he wished to plead his cause himself. He risks sixty years in prison, which would be added to the sentence pronounced in New York.
Once again, the defense argued that the interactions had been consensual and “transactional”, the victims accessing the solicitations of Weinstein to promote their careers. In some cases, the meetings “did not even occur at all,” said Mark Werksman, the main lawyer for the former producer. In his conclusions, on the 1 December, his colleague Alan Jackson called on the jurors to consider the material evidence of the accusations rather than to believe the complainants speechless. “Tears are not truth,” he launched.
“He could make your career or ruin it”
Harvey Weinstein is continued by four women designated in the file under the name of Jane Doe 1, 2, 3, 4 out of respect for their privacy. The first, an Italian model, said that he had furiously hit the door of his room at the Hotel Mr. C, in Beverly Hills, in February 2013, when she was in Hollywood for a film festival transalpine. Paralyzed by fear, she believed that he was going to kill her. He raped her and forced her to fellatio. She felt guilty for years to have opened the door.
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