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Disgraced former movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is weighing a potential guilty plea to resolve an undecided third-degree rape charge and avoid a third trial in New York on charges that came to define the #MeToo era.
Weinstein, in a wheelchair and looking noticeably paler than he did when he was last in court in June, was brought to Judge Curtis Farber’s court on Thursday, seeking to have his latest sex crime conviction thrown out over claims of juror intimidation.
Farber denied the motion, saying that tensions among jurors, which had spilled into open court during deliberations, had not risen to that level. In sworn statements, two jurors said they didn’t believe Weinstein was guilty, but had given in because of other jurors’ verbal aggression.
“Jurors don’t always behave in the manner we’d hope,” Farber said in denying the motion to dismiss the verdicts, adding: “I believe you had a fair trial.”
Weinstein was found guilty of forcing oral sex on Miriam Haley in 2006, and cleared of assaulting another woman, Kaja Sokola, also in 2006, and there was a hung jury on a third charge involving hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in a Manhattan hotel in 2013.
Dozens of other women have accused Weinstein of abuse and sexual attacks during his long career as a huge player in Hollywood, where he was one of the most powerful figures in the movie industry.
Weinstein, 73, has maintained his innocence and denied all the charges. His lawyers insisted during the most recent trial that the encounters were “transactional” and “consensual” and that the women willingly accepted his advances in hopes of getting work in the entertainment business.
Weinstein, who has been held at New York’s notorious Rikers Island jail for close to two years while awaiting the outcome of the latest round of prosecution, told the court: “I know I was unfaithful, I know I acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”
He said every day in the jail – which is under federal control due to decades of violence, corruption and bad conditions – “feels like a slow march toward death … The isolation is unbearable. My body is failing.”
He said in a letter to the court asking for the verdict to be thrown out because of alleged juror-on-juror intimidation last year that he felt “broken, abandoned and terrified” and claimed that “outside pressures and juror misconduct have turned this process into something that feels predetermined, not just flawed”.
He said conditions at Rikers “are not merely harsh, they are soul-crushing. My time at Rikers awaiting a fair trial is proving to be a death sentence.”
Weinstein is now scheduled for retrial on the charge involving Jessica Mann in early March. But Farber indicated he could override prosecutors’ demands for a third trial if Weinstein pleads guilty.
As it stands, Weinstein has two weeks to confirm or reject plea talks with prosecutors.
“To say he’s unenthusiastic about pleading guilty is an understatement,” Weinstein attorney Arthur Aidala said outside the court. “However, going through these trials is tremendously taxing and his health is horrible.”
Weinstein, Aidala indicated, is weighing a plea. But, he maintained, if his client’s name wasn’t Harvey Weinstein, the case would have been resolved. “To say justice is blind, unfortunately, is not accurate,” he said.
In court, prosecutors denied that they had singled Weinstein out. “This is what justice is in New York for sexual assault survivors,” said prosecutor Nicole Blumberg, adding that the decision to try him a third time was not “about his name or what he represents”.
Thursday’s hearing was just the latest turn in a landmark #MeToo-era case that has spanned seven years. Weinstein has been tried twice in New York, and once in California, where he was sentenced to 16 years in prison. He also is appealing a rape conviction in Los Angeles.
