New York (AFP) – The lawyer defending fallen Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein from rape and sexual assault charges called on jurors to give him the benefit of the doubt Tuesday before prosecutors make their closing argument at his retrial. A New York state appeals court had thrown out his 2020 convictions after irregularities in the presentation of witnesses at his original trial, forcing two victims of his alleged abuse to testify a second time.
“If there is a doubt about their case, you gotta throw it out. These are the people they want you to believe; they’re all women with broken dreams,” defense attorney Arthur Aidala said of the women who testified against Weinstein at this trial. Prosecutors will make their case to the jury later Tuesday.
Weinstein, the producer of box-office hits “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” has never acknowledged wrongdoing. He is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted in California of raping and assaulting a European actress more than a decade ago.
Two of the accusers in the case — onetime production assistant Miriam Haley and then-aspiring actress Jessica Mann — testified at Weinstein’s original trial. Their accounts helped galvanize the #MeToo movement nearly a decade ago, but the case is being re-prosecuted at a new trial in New York. His 2020 convictions on charges relating to Haley and Mann were overturned last year by the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled that the way witnesses were handled in the original trial was unlawful.
The retrial also heard new evidence from Kaja Sokola, a Polish former model who testified that the disgraced movie mogul sexually assaulted her when she was a minor at age 16.
© 2024 AFP
