Harvey Weinstein seems in a Manhattan prison courtroom for his retrial, Wednesday, Might 28, 2025, in New York. (Olga Fedorova/Pool Picture by way of AP)
NEW YORK — After 5 weeks of testimony from Harvey Weinstein ’s accusers and different prosecution witnesses at his intercourse crimes retrial, his protection has began presenting its personal witnesses. However it’s unclear whether or not the ex-studio boss himself will likely be considered one of them.
He’s because of determine within the coming days whether or not to testify. If he does, it could be a exceptional twist — and probably dangerous authorized transfer — within the yearslong saga of the onetime Hollywood honcho-turned-#MeToo outcast.
Weinstein, 73, is being retried on rape and sexual assault fees as a result of New York’s highest courtroom overturned his 2020 conviction. He denies the allegations, and his attorneys keep that something that occurred between him and his accusers was consensual.
READ: Weinstein accuser insists in tearful outburst: ‘He did that to me’
Weinstein’s attorneys started calling witnesses late Wednesday, beginning with a physician-pharmacist discussing a medicine that had come up in testimony.
Jurors heard Thursday from Helga Samuelsen, who shared a New York condominium in fall 2005 with Kaja Sokola, considered one of Weinstein’s accusers. Sokola alleges that Weinstein pressured oral intercourse on her the next yr, after a collection of undesirable advances that started when she was a 16-year-old trend mannequin in 2002.
Sokola instructed jurors weeks in the past that she by no means frolicked with Weinstein within the condominium the place she and Samuelsen stayed. However Samuelsen testified Thursday that one night the doorbell rang, Sokola answered it and there was Weinstein.
Samuelsen recalled that he and Sokola went right into a bed room, closed the door and emerged a couple of half-hour later, when Sokola noticed Weinstein out. Samuelsen mentioned she by no means spoke to Sokola in regards to the go to.
“I believe I sort of selected to not, actually,” mentioned Samuelsen, who was then a photographer’s assistant.
Having met Weinstein briefly in summer time 2005, she later sought his assist as she tried to launch a music profession. He made some introductions and invited her to write down a never-used film rating, Samuelsen mentioned, and he or she fashioned a New York-area cabaret act round 2019 with a lady near him. Samuelsen now works in insurance coverage in her native Denmark.
In the course of the prosecution’s section of the trial, Weinstein’s attorneys requested loads of questions geared toward elevating doubts in regards to the credibility and accuracy of what jurors have been listening to from prosecution witnesses, significantly Weinstein’s three accusers within the case: Sokola, Miriam Haley and Jessica Mann.
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All three ladies have been making an attempt to construct careers in present enterprise and say he preyed on them by dangling work prospects. Mann alleges he raped her in 2013. Haley, like Sokola, accuses Weinstein of forcibly performing oral intercourse on her in 2006.
Weinstein didn’t testify at his authentic trial. Many defendants in prison circumstances don’t.
The U.S. Structure ensures that they don’t need to. Jurors are instructed that they will’t maintain such silence in opposition to defendants and that it’s as much as prosecutors to show their case; defendants don’t must show something. If defendants do take the stand, they open themselves to pointed questioning from prosecutors.
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The Related Press typically doesn’t identify individuals who say they’ve been sexually assaulted, however Sokola, Mann and Haley have given their permission to be recognized.
