Harvey Weinstein Turns Himself In
Harvey Weinstein, once the most powerful of Hollywood moguls, is under arrest in New York City. The producer, whose alleged sexual abuse of women became a catalyst for the #metoo movement, turned himself in to authorities Friday morning.
HAPPENING NOW: Harvey Weinstein is turning himself in to police in New York City https://t.co/oEeQhrwpRN pic.twitter.com/4X0s7KIKFL
— CBS News (@CBSNews) May 25, 2018
CNN:
Ronan Farrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on sexual misconduct accusations against Harvey Weinstein, says this is an “incredible and unexpected moment” for the women who have come out against the disgraced Hollywood producer.
Weinstein was arrested Friday morning on charges he raped one woman and forced another to perform oral sex on him, a source familiar with the investigation tells CNN. But dozens of other woman have come forward publicly to accuse Weinstein of misconduct.
Many of his accusers didn’t believe they’d ever see justice, Farrow said.
“Not in a million years, and one of the hardest conversations I had over and over again with these brave women was that in addition to the sacrifice they were making in telling this story, they didn’t think they would ever be heard if they did take that leap, let alone to see actual accountability,” Farrow said.
JUST IN: Harvey Weinstein was just led out of a NYPD precinct in handcuffs. The disgraced Hollywood producer turned himself in this morning, charged with rape, a criminal sex act, sex abuse and sexual misconduct for incidents involving two separate women https://t.co/zMCnykf1yc pic.twitter.com/QbUJlDmvRL
— CNN (@CNN) May 25, 2018
He is expected to be in Manhattan court later today.
What say you? Login and Comment.
Question for any lawyers: would you petition for a bench trial?Report
Jury selection? Oh, my gosh. That’d turn the trial into the Simpson trial all over again.
Would you want to explain to the judge that you’d like to excuse a female juror because she said that she’s received an unwanted sexual advance at work? Like, out loud? In front of the other potential jurors?
If the dice rolled in such a way that you used peremptories only on female jurors, how would that play?
Yeah, you pretty much *HAVE* to go for a bench trial.Report
It’s a tricky question. Selecting a jury for either side is going to be difficult for the political reasons Jay said. At the same time, judges aren’t immune to political pressure either. Judges have come under a lot of scrutiny recently for lenient sentencing in rape cases. A bench trial might not be all that different strategically because of the political moment.Report
As I understand it, you’re supposed to push for a bench trial if you think your legal position is stronger than your public image. How bad would Weinstein’s legal case have to be for him to prefer a jury? Although I guess there’s always the possibility that you could pick up one juror in a he-said-she-said kind of case and get a mistrial.
Maybe they should just get Meryl Streep to give the closing. She could call him an artist of the caliber of Roman Polanski. That could get twelve people to vote Not Guilty, right?
I guess that’s what I keep coming back to. Twelve not guilties. What do you have to do to get that?Report
Is a plea possible/likely?
Or does that sort of thing not happen in these cases?Report
IANAL.Report
I have little faith that the system will do more than slap him on the wrist. He’ll either take a weak plea, or he’ll skate out of a trial with an acquittal, or only convicted on minor charges.Report
I don’t see what advantages he has. I believe that more than half of all rape trials end with the accused serving time, and there are likely to be a lot of counts. What’s your cutoff number for considering the system to have failed? (No pun intended with the word “cutoff”, although you can make a good argument that that would be justified too.)Report
Cosby needed two trials to get a conviction, and he drugged his victims. Weinstein never drugged anyone, or used violence, or even threatened violence. He just threatened careers and livelihood. I don’t trust a jury to see that as ‘really rape’, rather than just being a colossal dick.Report
We watched and loved cosby on TV. I wouldn’t remember Harvey Weinstein’s name except for the scandal. I don’t usually pay attention to who the producer of the movie is. And even if I remembered the name, I wouldn’t have any attachment to it. I suspect that most people wouldn’t either.
In order for someone to say guilty for people like Cosby and Clinton, you have to overcome resistance to the idea that their hero could do such a horrible thing. Weinstein is not in the same position. He is not anyone’s hero.
It is true that Harvey Weinstein has put a lot of women on the casting couch. But it does not follow that casting couch is all that he has done. The charges here are specifically about rape. It may very well turn out in the trial that given testimony and other evidence presented, something worse than the casting couch happened. So, even if everyone was inclined to regard* casting couch as assholery not amounting to rape, the specificity and the narrowness of the charges, where only one person is accusing him of rape and another of forcing her to perform oral sex (as opposed to what it might be if every hollywood actress who he had put on the couch had brought a charge against him) that the case is much stronger.
*I’m not saying that they would be correct in doing so, but I’m granting that Oscar has a better grasp of what a likely jury will think about the casting couch.Report
California is not New York.
That said:
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