The lawyer defending fallen Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein from rape and sexual assault fees referred to as these testifying in opposition to his consumer “women with broken dreams” as he made his last pitch to jurors.
A New York state appeals court docket had thrown out Weinstein’s 2020 convictions after irregularities within the presentation of witnesses at his authentic 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,” protection lawyer Arthur Aidala stated of the ladies who testified in opposition to Weinstein at this trial.
Prosecutor Nicole Blumberg fired again saying that “we are here because (Weinstein) raped three people — that’s why we are here.” Her closing argument will proceed Wednesday.
Judge Curtis Farber will then give directions to the jury, who will deliberate on a verdict.
Weinstein, the producer of box-office hits “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” has by no means acknowledged wrongdoing.
The cinema magnate, whose downfall in 2017 sparked the worldwide #MeToo motion, has been on trial once more since April 15 in a scruffy Manhattan courtroom.
He is serving a 16-year jail sentence after being convicted in California of raping and assaulting a European actress greater than a decade in the past.
Two of the accusers on this case — onetime manufacturing assistant Miriam Haley and then-aspiring actress Jessica Mann — testified at Weinstein’s authentic trial.
Their accounts helped impress the #MeToo motion practically a decade in the past, however the case is being re-prosecuted at a brand new trial in New York.
His 2020 convictions on fees regarding Haley and Mann, and his 23-year jail time period, have been overturned final yr by the New York Court of Appeals.
The tribunal dominated that the best way witnesses have been dealt with within the authentic trial was illegal.
Some 20 years after the earliest incidents have been alleged to have taken place, Aidala sought to forged doubt on the credibility of the accusers.
He stated it was not a query of whether or not his consumer engaged in sexual relations with the three girls, but when these encounters have been consensual.
He described the encounters as “transactional” and “casting couch” eventualities involving younger girls who used their magnificence and attraction to make an older man open doorways for them.
Prosecutor Blumberg countered that “this is not a transaction, it was never about fooling around, it was about rape.”
But Aidala insisted Weinstein was the one who was used, countering prosecutors who portrayed Weinstein as an omnipotent Hollywood determine.
Aidala loudly reeled off metaphors to clarify his model of occasions, searching for to win over the jury with jokes.
He mimicked the victims to focus on inconsistencies, likening one in every of them to a toddler caught in a lie.
The veteran protection lawyer confused that victims continued to affiliate with Weinstein after the alleged assaults, one thing they didn’t dispute, explaining that they feared jeopardizing their careers.
Blumberg stated “they knew it was necessary to stay on his side. They feared his retaliation, they buried (their) trauma as if nothing had happened.”
During the trial, the three victims testified that their sexual encounters with Weinstein weren’t consensual.
The retrial additionally heard new proof from Kaja Sokola, a Polish former mannequin who testified that Weinstein first sexually assaulted her when she was a minor at age 16.
She stated one event Weinstein pushed her onto a mattress and compelled her to have intercourse.
“I told him to stop,” she stated, “but he didn’t listen.”
Weinstein has appeared every day in a wheelchair, bodily subdued, however laughing and joking together with his authorized staff.
This time, hearings have obtained much less media consideration, happening within the shadow of the extremely anticipated trial of hip-hop mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, on trial blocks away at federal court docket on fees of intercourse trafficking and racketeering.
© 2025 AFP