Harvey Weinstein’s rape and sexual assault trial in Los Angeles was not postponed by a court on Monday until after the release of a divisive movie on his case in November.
The trial of Weinstein, who is accused of 11 sexual assaults against five women, will proceed as planned and begin on October 10, according to LA Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench.
The prosecution has 269 witnesses, therefore the trial is anticipated to run six to eight weeks.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, stated in his move to adjourn the trial today that a “firestorm of publicity” about the impending Brad Pitt-produced movie She Said may “prejudice the jury” against the former movie mogul.
In the movie She Said, which hits cinemas on November 18, Carey Mulligan and Zoe Kazan play reporters Megan Twohey and Jodi Kantor from the New York Times who authored an exposé on Weinstein in 2017.
Billboards, other forms of promotion, and social media posts about the movie, according to Werksman, would accentuate the “lurid and bad features of this case” and may persuade a jury to find against his client.
Weinstein was wheeled into court today wearing brown prison overalls, but Judge Lench denied Werksman’s plea to postpone the case until at least January to give the movie’s publicity time to die down.
The judge warned the court, “I don’t believe there will ever be a period when there is not media coverage of this case.”
Additionally, Werksman’s plea to postpone the trial until after his appeal is heard in New York, where he is now serving a 23-year prison term after his conviction for rape in 2020, was denied by the judge.
Weinstein, who has always maintained his innocence, will be permitted to appeal, New York State of Appeals Chief Judge Janet DiFiore decided last Wednesday. She based her decision on the defence team’s assertions that Weinstein wasn’t given a fair trial.
According to his attorneys, the judge in his New York trial let multiple witnesses to give testimony concerning actions for which Weinstein was never held accountable.
Additionally, they contend that one juror should have been removed from the panel because she concealed the fact that she had authored a book on sexual predators.
With respect to Weinstein’s appeal, the New York State of Appeals Court will hear oral arguments in 2019 according to Wednesday’s decision.
His conviction could be upheld by the court. He may be given bail while awaiting any retrial, however, if the court reverses the decision and mandates a new trial.
Werksman said today in LA’s downtown criminal court that a portion of the prosecution’s case against Weinstein in LA is predicated on his New York conviction, which ‘may be overturned by appeal.
The defence counsel argued that “the (LA) prosecution should not be permitted to bring this conviction when it might be overturned” by the New York Court of Appeal.
The New York Court of Appeals may overturn Mr. Weinstein’s conviction, it’s plausible.
We request that this matter be continued by the court in Los Angeles until the decision of the New York Court of Appeal.
The New York Court of Appeals has agreed to hear oral arguments next year, but LA deputy district attorney Paul Thompson argued that it might still be a “considerable time” before the court decides whether to maintain or overturn his New York conviction.
We could have to wait years to attempt this case if the commencement of Weinstein’s LA trial was postponed until after the New York appeal ruling, he warned.
He declared that the defense’s arguments were insufficient justification for a continuance.
Judge Lench rejected the request to postpone Weinstein’s trial, stating that “trying to weave around what the New York Court of Appeals will decide is troublesome for me.”
In response to Weinstein’s legal team’s complaint that the producer is “in discomfort” from damaged teeth and wants to have his dental issues corrected before trial, the court further offered to speak with medical experts at the LA’s Twin Towers prison, where Weinstein is being kept.
With lost teeth, Weinstein “may seem unpresentable,” according to his attorney Werksman, who testified in court. He said, “We don’t want the jury to believe he’s a wreck.
With regard to five unnamed women between 2004 and 2013, Weinstein is accused in Los Angeles of rape, sexual abuse, forced oral copulation, and forced sexual penetration.
The guy who helped launch the #MeToo movement could get a cumulative jail term of up to 140 years if found guilty of the LA allegations.
When he first appeared in court in Los Angeles in July 2021 after being extradited from New York, where he is now serving a 23-year term for the rape and sexual abuse of two women, he had already filed not guilty pleas to all 11 counts.
Prosecutors requested in May of last year that Judge Lench let 16 additional alleged victims, including actors Daryl Hannah and Rose McGowan, to testify against the defendant in his impending trial.
The 16 other women’s testimony, according to Deputy DA Thompson, was crucial because it revealed Weinstein’s “MO” (modus operandi) and demonstrated a “high degree of resemblance” between those experiences and the accusations Weinstein is facing in Los Angeles.
The prosecution’s goal, according to Werksman, was to “make the jury detest Mr. Weinstein” with this lengthy list of “vile uncharged crimes,” but Werksman fired back.
Werksman said that calling 16 additional women—none of whom have established their claims in court—was an attempt by prosecutors to “overwhelm the court” by presenting Weinstein as a “all-purpose, all-weather, 24-7 rapist.”
The sheer volume of additional purported victims, in his words, is “mind-numbing, ludicrous, and stupidly biassed.” Nobody will remember who did what to whom, when, where, or why, they continued. It is entirely needless and irrelevant.
We already have a sizable number of witnesses for the 11 charges in Los Angeles.
We are wasting time on the prosecution. Your honour should not tolerate this enormous feint.
Only six of the 16 claimed victims from before the year 2000 will be allowed to speak, according to Judge Lench’s decision. McGowan and Hannah are not one of the six.
In a petition filed in December of last year, Werksman, Weinstein’s attorney, said that the grand jury that indicted his client had been “manipulated” by the prosecution, who had offered “poor, pathetic, inaccurate, and misleading” evidence backed by “pseudo-scientific” testimony from expert witnesses.
Asserting that prosecutors “did not influence the grand jury” and that she “did not discover inconsistencies” in the material prosecutors submitted to the grand jury, Judge Lench still dismissed the request.