Weinstein’s rape trial has jury in place
NEW YORK — A jury of seven men and five women was selected Friday for Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial after a two-week process in which scores of people were dismissed because they had already made up their minds about the disgraced Hollywood mogul.
Opening statements are expected Wednesday in the case against the 67-year-old executive who has come to be seen as the archvillain of the #MeToo era.
The once powerful and feared studio boss behind such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” is charged with raping a woman in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing a sex act on another at his apartment in 2006. He has said any sexual activity was consensual. If convicted, he could get life in prison.
The defense raised an outcry and demanded a mistrial because one of the jurors is the author of an upcoming novel involving young women dealing with predatory older men. The request was denied, but Weinstein’s lawyers continued to claim outside court that the juror had withheld the information on her questionnaire.
“We got the best jury we could get under the circumstances,” defense attorney Donna Rotunno told reporters. “I’m obviously not happy with what happened in the end there. I think that was an absolutely ridiculous decision.”
The defense said it wasn’t specifically trying to exclude young women but didn’t want jurors too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s.
“That was a different time in New York and on planet Earth,” said another Weinstein attorney, Arthur Aidala.
Three alternates were also seated and will take the place of any jurors who can’t make it through to deliberations.
Of the 600-plus people summoned for the case, some marked themselves for disqualification by admitting they knew one of Weinstein’s many accusers, had personal experience with sexual abuse or read “Catch and Kill,” a book by Ronan Farrow, one of the first reporters to expose the allegations against Weinstein.