Harvey Weinstein arrives at the New York State Supreme Court in lower Manhattan on Feb. 24, 2020.ANNA WATTS/The New York Times News Service
Harvey Weinstein’s second sex crimes trial, which begins Monday in Los Angeles, was once seen as largely symbolic. After all, the former movie mogul, who is 70 and in poor health, still has 21 years to serve in prison following his 2020 conviction in New York for rape and criminal sexual assault.
But a late-summer surprise from New York’s highest court – one that gave Mr. Weinstein a glimmer of hope of walking free – has heightened the West Coast stakes. Should Mr. Weinstein win his appeal, the LA case would determine his fate.
“It is disturbing and shocking that Harvey was allowed to continue his New York appeal, and so we – survivors, supporters – are paying very, very close attention to the Los Angeles trial,” said Caitlin Dulany, an actress who has accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually harassing and assaulting her in the mid-1990s. Ms. Dulany, who is not involved in the LA trial, was a plaintiff in a class-action civil suit against Mr. Weinstein in 2018 that a federal judge ultimately rejected.
Supporters of the #MeToo movement are also looking to the trial as a signal of the movement’s vitality in the entertainment industry, where there have been setbacks, such as the implosion of Time’s Up, the anti-harassment organization. It was founded by powerful Hollywood women in 2017 to make sure Mr. Weinstein’s behaviour would never be repeated.
If Mr. Weinstein is acquitted by Hollywood’s hometown legal system, it could have a chilling effect, some #MeToo supporters worry. LA courts already have a reputation for being soft on show-business figures.
“There’s obviously a lot at stake for the women who are testifying, but there is also a lot at stake for all of us,” Ms. Dulany said. “If it goes the wrong way, it will be a step backwards. I think it will make it harder for women to come forward in the future.”
Others caution against using these trials as a measuring stick of #MeToo’s endurance or its waning influence. The court cases involve relatively few women, whose claims must meet the strict standards that criminal law requires for conviction.
“We’ve never measured the success or the power of #MeToo by high-profile individuals being held accountable,” Fatima Goss Graves, the president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, said.
Mr. Weinstein, who has been accused by more than 90 women of sexual misconduct, faces 11 charges in his LA trial, which is expected to last six to eight weeks – long enough to overlap with the Nov. 18 theatrical release of She Said, a US$30-million drama about the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation that exposed Mr. Weinstein’s behaviour. The charges include four counts each of rape and forcible oral copulation involving five women between 2004 and 2013 in LA and Beverly Hills. They represent a more expansive set of accusations than in the New York trial.
Mr. Weinstein also faces one count of sexual penetration with a foreign object by force and two counts of sexual battery by restraint, according to the March, 2021, indictment, which identified the accusers as Jane Does 1 through 5. They will be identified as such throughout the trial; even if the public is able to determine their identities, the law forbids that they be named during the proceeding.
Only one of the women has been publicly identified: Lauren Young, a model and actress who was allowed to testify at Mr. Weinstein’s New York trial as a pattern-of-abuse witness. She testified that Mr. Weinstein trapped her in a hotel bathroom in 2013 and masturbated while gripping and pinching her breast before she fled.
A second LA accuser is an Italian model and actress who told The Los Angeles Times in 2017 that Mr. Weinstein “grabbed me by the hair and forced me to do something I did not want to do.” According to a criminal complaint, Mr. Weinstein forced oral sex on her, then intercourse, at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2013.
If convicted in California, Mr. Weinstein faces a life sentence, regardless of the outcome of his New York appeal.
George Gascón, the progressive district attorney in Los Angeles County who has been blamed by critics for rising crime rates, declined to comment on the Weinstein case, as did Marlene Martinez and Paul Thompson, the deputy district attorneys assigned to the trial.
“The notion of getting justice obviously means a great deal to a great many people,” said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University law professor and co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. “Losing in California would be bad for the victims, bad for the #MeToo movement and bad for Gascón.”
As in New York, Mr. Weinstein has denied any wrongdoing, saying that he only engaged in consensual sex. Mark Werksman, Mr. Weinstein’s LA lawyer, said by phone that Mr. Weinstein was the innocent victim of a “massive pile-on,” and that the charges against him were “weak and unbelievable and would never have been brought if he were not at the epicentre of the #MeToo movement.” Mr. Werksman declined to say whether his client would testify or who might be called to testify on his behalf.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.