After years of #MeToo-era legal peril and prison, Harvey Weinstein returned to court in New York City on Tuesday for another attempt at resolving a rape case tied to hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann. Jury selection opened in the proceeding—his third time before jurors in this matter—concerning whether he raped Mann in a Manhattan hotel in 2013, according to the Associated Press.
The start of jury selection underscored how closely the parties expect the retrial to focus. The proceeding is described as more streamlined than the wide-ranging allegations previously aired in Weinstein’s earlier trials in New York and Los Angeles, the AP reported, and Weinstein has denied the accusations. In court this winter, Weinstein declared, “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone,” according to AP’s account.
By Tuesday’s end, the court had not selected any jurors. The AP reported that more than 80 people sought to be excused during initial screening, with the number of excusals framed as a response to concerns about how to remain fair and impartial given the case’s extensive public profile.
Prosecutors also raised a new evidentiary thread before jury selection began. The AP said Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Candace White told the judge that prosecutors had obtained a remark Weinstein allegedly made to a court officer six years earlier, during the period surrounding Weinstein’s overturned 2020 sexual assault conviction. White said the officer told prosecutors last week he was present during Weinstein’s February 2020 conviction and heard Weinstein say: “If you had seen these girls, you would have done the exact same thing,” the AP reported.
Weinstein’s lawyers urged the judge to keep any mention of the alleged remark out of the retrial. Defense attorney Marc Agnifilo argued in court that the claim sounded “far-fetched” and that it surfaced too late, according to the AP.
Judge Farber also signaled that one prior theme would not return for this retrial. The AP said a claims fund for women who said Weinstein sexually mistreated them, which was explored in earlier proceedings, likely will not come up again. Farber told the parties that the defense did not intend to raise the subject, the AP reported.
The trial’s defense team has also changed since Weinstein’s previous retrial in the case. Agnifilo and partners took over in February after long-time Weinstein lawyer Arthur Aidala stepped aside from the retrial to focus on appeals and civil matters, according to AP. The AP characterized Aidala as “folksy” and Agnifilo as “buttoned-up.”
Weinstein has not testified in any of the trials referenced in the AP account, and his lawyers have maintained that he never had non-consensual sex. In contrast, the AP reported that Mann has testified about a consensual, on-and-off relationship with Weinstein before the incident, describing a hotel encounter in which she protested “I don’t want to do this,” told jurors she said Weinstein made continued advances and demands until she “just gave up,” and said he cornered her in a Manhattan hotel room on a weekend getaway.
The AP said Weinstein is expected to face a retrial that could run up to six weeks, with the schedule set to resume Wednesday. The court planned to question prospective jurors individually in private, with broader questioning in the courtroom to follow later, the AP reported.
Beyond the case involving Mann, the AP outlined Weinstein’s earlier convictions and procedural history. The AP said Weinstein had been convicted of forcing oral sex on production assistant and producer Miriam Haley in 2006, but acquitted in a separate count involving model-turned-psychotherapist Kaja Sokola, and that a jury did not decide the rape charge involving Mann in the earlier retrial after the foreperson refused to keep deliberating. The AP also noted that Weinstein has health problems and has used a wheelchair, and that he told the judge in January that his “mental state is collapsing” in New York’s Rikers Island jail. The AP said the Mann-related charge is a lower-level felony punishable by up to four years, and it noted Weinstein already has served longer than that.