Weinstein retrial nears finish as legal professionals argue: sexual predator or #MeToo ‘poster boy’?

The two sides took very completely different tones of their closing arguments, that are resulting from conclude Wednesday. Weinstein’s lawyer, Arthur Aidala, veered into folksy jokes and theatricality — generally re-enacting witnesses’ habits — as he contended that his shopper engaged in a “courting game,” not crimes. Prosecutor Nicole Blumberg, as direct as Aidala was discursive, urged jurors to deal with Weinstein’s accusers and their days of grueling testimony.

“This was not a ‘courting game,’ as Mr. Aidala wants you to believe. This was not a ‘transaction,’” she informed jurors. “This was never about ‘fooling around.’ It was about rape.”

The majority-female jury is predicted to start out deliberations sooner or later Wednesday, inheriting a case that was seen as a #MeToo watershed when Weinstein was convicted 5 years in the past. It ended up being retried, and reshaped, as a result of an appeals courtroom overturned the 2020 verdict.

Weinstein, the previous Hollywood honcho-turned-#MeToo outcast, has pleaded not responsible to raping a lady in 2013 and forcing oral intercourse on two others, individually, in 2006.

Aidala argued that the whole lot that occurred between the ex-producer and his accusers was a consensual, if “transactional,” exchange of favors. The attorney accused prosecutors of “trying to police the bedroom” and zeroing in on the person seen as ”the poster boy, the unique sinner, for the #MeToo motion.”

“They tried to do it five years ago, and now there’s a redo, and they’re trying to do it again,” he informed jurors. His hours-long summation touched on issues from the acclaimed, Weinstein-co-produced 1994 movie “Pulp Fiction” to his personal marriage and his grandmother’s Italian gravy, at instances enjoying for — and getting — laughs from jurors and Weinstein.

Aidala depicted the previous studio boss as a self-made New Yorker, whereas portray Weinstein’s accusers as troubled and canny “women with broken dreams” who plied him for film alternatives and different perks, saved participating with him for years after which turned on him to money in on his #MeToo undoing. All three acquired compensation via authorized processes separate from the felony trial.

Blumberg countered that Weinstein interpreted a sexual “no” as a cue to “push a little bit more, and if they still say no, just take it anyway.”

She argued that his accusers stayed in pleasant contact with Weinstein as a result of they had been attempting to work in leisure, and so they feared their careers can be squashed in the event that they crossed him.

“He chose people who he thought would be the perfect victims, who he could rape and keep silent,” the prosecutor stated. “He underestimated them.”

Weinstein had a decades-long run as one of many film trade’s most influential folks. In 2017, allegations of sexual assault and harassment tanked his profession and catalyzed the #MeToo motion, which seeks accountability for sexual misconduct.

He was subsequently convicted of intercourse crimes and sentenced to jail in New York and California. His California attraction hasn’t been determined.

Since the New York retrial opened April 23, prosecutors have introduced in additional than two dozen witnesses. The prosecution centered on Weinstein’s three accusers, who every confronted days of questions.

In typically graphic and generally tearful testimony, the ladies stated the Oscar-winning producer used his showbiz stature as a hook to prey on them.

Jessica Mann, who accused Weinstein of rape, was a hairstylist hoping to make it as an actor when she met him. The sexual assault accusers additionally had been attempting to construct careers in leisure: Miriam Haley was a manufacturing assistant and producer, and Kaja Sokola was a teenage mannequin who wished to get into performing.

Prosecutors added Sokola’s allegations to the case for the retrial. But another accusers from the primary trial weren’t a part of the second. The appeals courtroom stated it was prejudicial to incorporate their accusations, which by no means resulted in prices.

Weinstein, 73, determined to not testify. His attorneys introduced a couple of witnesses to solid doubts on sure elements of the accusers’ accounts. But Weinstein’s protection additionally relied closely on questioning prosecution witnesses — even shocking Sokola together with her personal personal journal — to attempt to undermine their credibility.

The Associated Press usually doesn’t determine folks with out their permission if they are saying they’ve been sexually assaulted. Sokola, Mann and Haley have agreed to be named.

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