Harvey Weinstein Doesn't Plan to Testify at New York Retrial
Harvey Weinstein doesn't plan to testify at his sex crimes retrial in New York City.
Weinstein's lawyer Arthur Aidala shared the news on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. The trial is set to proceed with closing arguments on Tuesday, as the court does not hear the case on Mondays.
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Weinstein is charged with two counts of committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree and one count of third-degree rape. The charges stem from accusations by former model Kaja Sokola, former TV production assistant Miriam Haley — the first accuser to testify in Weinstein's retrial — and former aspiring actor Jessica Mann. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Weinstein's defense began calling witnesses last week, and according to AP, the former movie mogul had been weighing whether to take the stand.
'He wanted to testify, and we respect that instinct. But at this stage, doing so could unfairly damage his credibility,' Weinstein spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said in a statement to Variety. 'Our position is one of caution, not evasion.'
On Friday, May 30, the jury heard from witness Talita Maia through a transcript read aloud by court staff. Maia, a former friend and roommate of accuser Jessica Mann, previously testified during Weinstein's 2020 New York trial. She was unavailable for the current proceedings, so jurors heard a reading of her earlier testimony. In it, Maia testified that Mann never expressed discomfort around Weinstein and never indicated that he had assaulted her in any way at the time of an alleged assault in 2013.
Other witnesses called by the defense included Thomas Richards, another former friend of Mann's who met her sometime in 2011 or 2012, and Helga Semulsen, a former friend of Sokola's who briefly shared a New York apartment with her in the fall of 2005.
Weinstein didn't testify at his first New York trial, nor at a separate rape trial in L.A. that occurred in 2022, in which he was also convicted and has appealed the verdict.
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