Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced former Hollywood producer, is on trial in Manhattan for the third time to face accusations that he raped an actress in a hotel more than a decade ago.
The former actress, Jessica Mann, has testified at each trial, and she finished her fifth day of testimony on Friday. Mr. Weinstein was convicted on the rape charge at the first trial, in 2020, but it was overturned. In a second trial, last June, the jury deadlocked on that count, and the judge ordered a new trial.
The judge overseeing the new trial, Curtis Farber of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, said during jury selection that he wants to finish the trial by May 15, and he has asked both sides to finish presenting their evidence next week.
Here are three takeaways from the second week of the trial.
Jessica Mann and Harvey Weinstein had a complex relationship.
Ms. Mann testified that she was visiting New York in 2013 and had planned a morning meal with Mr. Weinstein and her friends. Mr. Weinstein arrived early and got a hotel room over her objections, she said. She joined him there and he raped her after injecting his penis with medication that produced an erection, she said.
Two days later, she wrote a note on her phone labeled “Thoughts; Violation of emotions,” which had not been presented at either of the previous trials. In the note, she said that she “let myself become emotionally attached to someone” and “the actions vs. how I feel towards this one person has conflict in my life.” Ms. Mann did not mention rape or name Mr. Weinstein in the note, but she did not dispute during cross-examination that it had been written about him.
Teny Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein, introduced the note to discredit Ms. Mann’s testimony. Ms. Geragos said Ms. Mann had written the note as she returned to Los Angeles from New York, after having tea with Mr. Weinstein and his daughter.
Ms. Mann testified that she “struggled with some of the decisions that I was making that were different than what I was raised with.”
In the years following, Ms. Mann has said she fell into a complex relationship with Mr. Weinstein, which included friendly email exchanges, phone calls and several consensual sexual encounters. She called it a “dance” in which she tried to keep him both happy and at a distance. At one point, Ms. Mann said, she decided to enter a romantic relationship with him.
Testifying appears to be taking a toll on Ms. Mann.
After the mixed verdict last year, Ms. Mann said, “I am ready, willing and able to endure this as many times as it takes for justice and accountability to be served.”
But throughout this week, she has taken breaks and has at times cried on the stand. On Thursday, after being confronted with the note from 2013, Ms. Mann said she was feeling unwell.
“I feel like I’m getting really spacey right now and I’m trying to be really present,” Ms. Mann said.
Several minutes later, after a break and as Ms. Geragos’s cross-examination resumed, Ms. Mann again said she was stressed and unwell.
Justice Farber ended the day early.
There has been less media attention for the third trial.
Mr. Weinstein’s downfall nearly a decade ago was seen as a watershed moment in the #MeToo movement, which demanded accountability for sexual harassment and assault in the workplace. While the public and media attention around his case has diminished in recent years, legal experts have said it is not a perfect gauge of the public’s feelings about #MeToo.
There have been far fewer reporters at this trial than in 2020 and last year.
Mr. Weinstein’s current defense team, hired just months before the start of the trial, has argued that Ms. Mann only said she was raped after other allegations against Mr. Weinstein became public in 2017 during the height of the movement.
Hurubie Meko is a Times reporter covering criminal justice in New York, with a focus on the Manhattan district attorney’s office and state courts.
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