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Weinstein, 73, is being retried on rape and sexual assault charges because New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction.
NEW YORK — After five weeks of testimony from the accusers of Harvey Weinstein and other witnesses brought forward by the prosecution in his sex crimes retrial, the defense has begun calling its own witnesses to the stand. However, it’s uncertain if the former studio executive himself will be among those testifying.
Weinstein must make a decision by the end of court Thursday regarding whether he’ll take the stand. Should he choose to do so, it would be an unexpected development — and a potentially perilous legal strategy — in the prolonged narrative of the one-time Hollywood mogul who became a pariah in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
Now 73, Weinstein is facing a retrial on rape and sexual assault charges after New York’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction. He refutes the allegations, with his lawyers arguing that any interactions he had with the accusers were consensual.
Weinstein didn’t testify at his original trial. Many defendants in criminal cases don’t.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees that they don’t have to. Jurors are told that they can’t hold such silence against defendants and that it’s up to prosecutors to prove their case; defendants do not need to prove anything. If defendants do take the stand, they open themselves to pointed questioning from prosecutors.
Weinstein’s lawyers began calling witnesses late Wednesday, starting with a physician-pharmacist discussing a medication that had come up in testimony.
In the weeks prior, the defense asked plenty of questions aimed at raising doubts about the credibility and accuracy of what jurors were hearing from prosecution witnesses, particularly Weinstein’s three accusers in the case.
Two of the women allege that he forcibly performed oral sex on them, separately, in 2006. The third says he raped her in 2013.
All three were trying to build careers in show business and say he preyed on them by dangling work prospects.
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