Harvey Weinstein: Jury Begins Deliberations in Rape Trial

Harvey Weinstein’s case is now within the jury’s fingers.

The jury started deliberations on Friday, almost two months after Weinstein’s trial started in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom.

The jurors — eight males and 4 ladies — must wade by way of testimony from 50 witnesses as they resolve whether or not to convict Weinstein of costs of rape and sexual assault.

In her closing argument, Deputy District Lawyer Marlene Martinez described Weinstein as a “predator” who used the identical technique many times to lure ladies in resort rooms and power them into intercourse acts. She argued that Weinstein received away with it for therefore lengthy as a result of “everybody simply turned their heads.”

“He thought he was so highly effective that folks would excuse his conduct,” she stated. “‘That’s simply Harvey being Harvey.’ ‘That’s simply Hollywood’…It’s time for the defendant’s reign of terror to finish and it’s time for the kingmaker to be delivered to justice.”

The jury heard from eight accusers in complete, together with Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the spouse of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, an Italian mannequin who reported Weinstein to the NYPD in 2015.

Weinstein is going through seven costs associated to 4 alleged victims, together with two counts of rape, two counts of “forcible oral copulation,” two counts of “sexual battery by restraint” and one depend of “sexual penetration by power.” If convicted on all counts, he faces a most sentence of 60 years. 4 different costs had been dropped halfway by way of the trial after prosecutors stated they might not name a fifth accuser to testify.

Weinstein’s protection lawyer, Alan Jackson, argued that the ladies both invented their allegations or relabeled “consensual, transactional” encounters as “rape.” He confirmed textual content messages and emails that demonstrated that among the ladies stored in contact with Weinstein after the alleged rapes and continued to hunt out conferences with him in hopes of advancing their careers.

“They performed the sport. They hate it now, unequivocally,” he argued. “And that hate translated into their testimony.”

The jury was repeatedly instructed by the choose to not devour any media protection of the trial and in addition to to not watch the trailer for “She Stated,” the characteristic movie now in theaters that recounts how the New York Occasions first broke the Weinstein story in 2017.

Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence from his New York trial in 2020. His protection staff in New York is at the moment interesting that conviction. The New York Courtroom of Appeals, the best court docket within the state, has agreed to listen to the case.

Weinstein was extradited to Los Angeles in 2021 and has been held since then in a medical unit of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Whatever the consequence of the L.A. trial, he might be despatched again to state jail in New York to finish his sentence there. If the New York conviction is upheld, he wouldn’t be eligible for parole there till he’s 87 years previous.