Six years after the disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein first went on trial in Manhattan, a third group of jurors will be asked to determine if he is guilty of raping an aspiring actress in a hotel room more than a decade ago.
The jurors, chosen last week, will hear opening statements on Tuesday related to accusations that he attacked the woman, Jessica Mann, at a Manhattan hotel in 2013.
Mr. Weinstein, 74, was convicted of the rape in 2020 during his first trial in Manhattan, but the verdict was overturned. In the second trial last year, the jury was deadlocked on that count. The judge ordered a new trial.
Mr. Weinstein was also convicted of rape in a separate trial in California and is appealing that conviction. He has told the judge overseeing his current trial that it “feels like a slow march to my death,” and his lawyers have said he is battling a host of medical issues.
While the public and media attention around his case has diminished in recent years, 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.
During last year’s trial, prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office said that Mr. Weinstein wielded his unfettered power over the film and television industry for 30 years to exert “enormous control” and sexually assault women. He offered the women scripts and the promise of fame and “used those dream opportunities as weapons,” they said.
But Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers in the second trial were betting that the effects of the #MeToo movement on the nation’s culture and politics, from Hollywood to the White House, had faded, giving them a better chance of success.
Mr. Weinstein had been a powerful person in Hollywood, they argued, but his power was not as great as prosecutors suggested and would not have blocked the women from opportunities in the industry. Instead, the women had capitalized on the #MeToo movement and “were trying to take advantage of Mr. Weinstein,” they said.
The trial ended in a mixed verdict in June.
Now, in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Weinstein will again face the accusation that he attacked Ms. Mann.
She testified last year that she first met the former producer when she was about 27, after moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. He pressured her into giving him a massage shortly after, she said.
In 2013, she was visiting New York and had planned a morning meal with friends and the producer. He arrived early and got a hotel room over her objections, Ms. Mann testified. Still, she went with him to the room, where he injected his penis with medication that produced an erection and then raped her, she said.
She tried to fight, she said, but eventually “I just gave up, I wanted to get out.”
In the years that followed, Ms. Mann said, she fell into a complex relationship with Mr. Weinstein, which included friendly email exchanges, phone calls and several consensual sexual encounters. In her testimony last year, 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.
During cross-examination, a lawyer for Mr. Weinstein questioned Ms. Mann about money — close to $500,000 — that she had received as settlement payments through a fund established as part of the bankruptcy of Mr. Weinstein’s company.
“This is not about money for me,” Ms. Mann testified.
For this trial, Mr. Weinstein has hired a new trial team of Jacob Kaplan, Marc Agnifilo and Teny Geragos.
The lawyers have already signaled that their defense will differ, at least slightly. They have indicated that they will not argue that Ms. Mann made the accusations against their client for financial gain.
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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