Weinstein's Retrial to Begin, Testing Legacy of #MeToo Movement

New York Times

23-04-2025

The woman had been testifying for hours in the 2020 trial of Harvey Weinstein when she broke into sobs.
The witness, Jessica Mann, had told a Manhattan jury about a yearslong relationship with Mr. Weinstein, during which she said the Hollywood producer had raped her in 2013. During the defense cross-examination, she had to reveal that she had been sexually assaulted when she was younger.
She cried as she was asked to read from an email about how the abuse had affected her relationship with Mr. Weinstein. When she could not compose herself, the judge adjourned the trial for the day.
After she had left the stand, her screams could be heard from a back room.
Now, five years later, Ms. Mann is expected to take the stand again in a closely watched retrial of Mr. Weinstein, whose treatment of women catalyzed the #MeToo movement.
On Wednesday, prosecutors with the Manhattan district attorney's office, led by Alvin L. Bragg, and Mr. Weinstein's lawyers will give opening statements. The trial is expected to last up to six weeks.
The jury is composed of five men and seven women, a reverse of the demographics in the first trial. For both sides, the core arguments of Mr. Weinstein's interactions with the women are likely to follow closely what they had told the jury in 2020.
At the time, Mr. Weinstein was a force, having produced movies like 'Pulp Fiction' and 'Shakespeare In Love' and making the careers of actors. He wielded that power to harass and sexually assault women, according to dozens who came forward.
Outside the courtroom, Mr. Weinstein's trial marked a change in how accusations of sexual assault by powerful men were treated, creating pressure on prosecutors to take the cases seriously.
But last year, New York's highest court overturned Mr. Weinstein's conviction. Mr. Weinstein, the court said, had been deprived of a fair trial when prosecutors called witnesses who said he had assaulted them, but whose accusations were not backed by physical evidence and were not the basis for any charges. Mr. Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence on those charges, has also been convicted of sex crimes in California and faces prison there.
In the years since his 2020 conviction, much has changed in the country. But Mr. Weinstein's team is betting that the effects of the #MeToo movement on the nation's culture and politics, from Hollywood to the White House, have faded.
'The biggest difference over the past five years is the world we're living in,' his defense lawyer Arthur L. Aidala said in an interview last week, adding that during the first trial #MeToo was 'the most important thing in society.'
'People's heads are in a different place right now,' he said.
For others, the momentum has not ebbed, even as the sex-crime convictions of men like Mr. Weinstein and Bill Cosby have been overturned on appeal.
Jennifer Mondino, an official of the National Women's Law Center, said that in recent years, thousands of women have approached her organization seeking lawyers to fight workplace sexual harassment.
The pace has not slowed, said Ms. Mondino, senior director of the center's Time's Up Legal Defense Fund, and the complaints are against institutions and people that in the past seemed 'absolutely unmovable.'
'It has really galvanized the movement,' she said. 'And it's a movement that continues despite what happens with this next criminal trial against Harvey Weinstein.'
Accusers have said Mr. Weinstein preyed on women with promises of opportunities. Then, they said, he forced them into sex.
Prosecutors are expected to call as a witness another woman who testified in the first trial, Miriam Haley. Ms. Haley, a former television production assistant, testified in 2020 that Mr. Weinstein assaulted her in his apartment in 2006.
A new woman's complaint has been added to the charges against Mr. Weinstein. The woman, who has not been identified, is expected to tell jurors that he sexually assaulted her at a hotel in TriBeCa in 2006.
In a September filing, prosecutors said they plan to call 'corroborating witnesses' as well as experts who will testify about how victims of rape and sexual assaults can maintain contact with assailants and may not tell law enforcement.
The prosecutors, led by Nicole Blumberg, an assistant district attorney, are primarily from the newly formed Special Victims Division in the Manhattan district attorney's office.
The core of the defense is likely to be that Mr. Weinstein's relationships with the women were consensual. In the first trial, Mr. Weinstein's lawyers said that his accusers had maintained sexual relationships with him long after the assaults that prosecutors say occurred.
In 2020, the defense lawyers used emails and writings in an effort to discredit the women, showing them asking for movie premiere tickets, and thanking him for support, among other things.
The defense team will also have transcripts of testimony from the first trial and will be able to compare what the women say now with what they said five years ago.