2024-05-02 06:50:15
The Criminal Court in Manhattan, thirteenth floor, room 81. It’s still lunch break, there’s a dim mustard light outside the room, under which a few reporters are sitting, a security guard is just barking at one of them because his camera is blocking the door of the courtroom opposite .
Shortly after 2 p.m., Harvey Weinstein is wheeled into the hall in a wheelchair by two officers. He appears pale, he smiles gently for a moment, doesn’t look at anyone, not the countless, mostly young journalists in the room, not the officials, not the court illustrator, only his press spokesman and his lawyers, he briefly shakes hands with one of them. Almost a week ago, the rape conviction against him was overturned.
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The hall smells of curd soap, the officials stand behind Weinstein, and for the time being he is no longer visible. It is Weinstein’s first appearance in court since his conviction four years ago, a sad return for the former film mogul, now morally dead. If human lives weren’t at stake, this scene could have been dismissed as a cliché, like something out of a movie: a washed-up old man from the time before the indictment, silent.
What is being discussed here in the room?
The date will be short: the public prosecutor’s office and Weinstein’s lawyers discuss the date of a possible retrial, the responsible judge Curtis Farber sets a date for the end of May, on which the parties should exchange documents and also present the list of witnesses to be summoned. It is unclear whether a new trial will actually take place; it is tentatively planned for the beginning of September.
New York, May 1, 2024: Harvey Weinstein is back in court
Source: dpa
What happened, what happened since the verdict against Weinstein, what is being discussed here in the room? In 2017, #MeToo came with full force and toppled the most powerful man in Hollywood based on eyewitness testimony. Nobody is above the law – not even, as representatives of the #MeToo movement have never tired of emphasizing since Weinstein’s arrest in 2019, the old white man. But nobody is below the law, as Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala said at a press conference in front of the courthouse on the day his client’s verdict was overturned, surrounded by a throng of pigeon droppings, security officers and scattered passers-by who spontaneously became onlookers.
In March 2020, Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison for sex crimes against Jessica Mann and Miriam Haleyi and has since been imprisoned at the Mowhawk Correctional Facility in Upstate New York. Weinstein is said to have forced production assistant Mimi Haleyi to perform oral sex in 2006 and raped current hairdresser Jessica Mann in 2013.
The Molineux Rule
On April 25, 2024, the New York Court of Appeals overturned the verdict in a narrow 4:3 decision on the grounds that James Burke, the judge responsible at the time, had massively disadvantaged Weinstein and made a fair trial impossible: Burke had allowed the public prosecutor’s office to Allow witnesses to testify who, although they reported sexual assaults by Weinstein, did not bring any charges themselves and only served to highlight Weinstein’s alleged inclinations.
During the trial, witnesses were heard about their experiences of abuse, even though these women were not part of the prosecution; A defendant may only be judged according to the crime he is accused of – the so-called Molineux rule of the state of New York prohibits such witnessing. In addition, at the prosecutor’s request, Judge Burke agreed that Weinstein’s cross-examination could have included questions that had nothing to do with the specific charge and would simply have shed light on his character. In order to avoid being cross-examined, Weinstein had to refrain from making his own statement.
Victim advocate Gloria Allred in front of the courthouse
What: AFP
Weinstein is currently being treated in the hospital and his health is poor. He may soon be transferred to California, where he was sentenced to sixteen years in prison for rape. His lawyers there also plan to challenge the verdict.
Slogans and facts
Immediately after the hearing, various actors were disappointed by #MeToo; the actresses Ashley Judd and RoseMcGowan, the witnesses examined in court, the prosecutors and the star lawyer Gloria Allred, who represented them, seemed hurt but combative. The tenor: Nobody can take away the victims’ reality and the pain of it; the fight between good and evil continues.
Even before that, there were moments on the sidelines of the proceedings that were discussed more on a moral than a legal level. In 2019, Ronald Sullivan, an African-American professor and dean of Harvard Law School, was appointed to Harvey Weinstein’s defense team. Shortly thereafter, Harvard students began demonstrating against Sullivan, and the university initiated the preliminary stages of a “Title IX” case (once the university’s internal investigation into gender discrimination). Sullivan resigned from Weinstein’s defense team and shortly thereafter left his post as dean.
Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala (M.)
Quelle: Getty Images via AFP
When he left Weinstein’s legal team, he warned that, given an “unpopular” defendant, it was particularly important from a legal perspective to give him the same trial as anyone else. In the Weinstein trial, however, slogans sometimes created supposed facts. During the 2018 Golden Globes, a New York Times ad aired: “He said. She said. He said. She said. He said. She said. He said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. She said. …The truth has power. The truth will not be threatened. “The truth has a voice.”
“Yes, we are optimistic”
The sun is now shining in front of the courthouse and the air is humid. Weinstein’s lawyers appear in front of the cameras once again. The mood is subdued, joyful. “Finally a neutral judge,” says Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala. A reporter asks how his client is doing. Good, Aidala replies, he read hundreds of books in prison and accepted the new living conditions: “Harvey was used to champagne and caviar, today he has to buy chips and M&Ms at the prison kiosk.”
He is now frail and very sick, but popular with the inmates “because he is so charismatic; It’s full of stories.” Behind Aidala, a man wrapped in a beige blanket holds up a sign that says “Trump must go.” After Weinstein’s team, Gloria Allred appears in front of the cameras. In her hand she holds a small white sign on which it says in red pen: “#MeToo will prevail”.
“Yes, we are optimistic,” says Weinstein’s PR manager Juda Engelmayer, as the cables have already been rolled up again and the cameras have been dismantled. “If there is actually a new trial, then Harvey can finally testify.” After all, he knows exactly what happened between him and the women.
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