Harvey Weinstein’s New York rape retrial opened with prosecutors and defense lawyers offering sharply different accounts of a 2013 hotel-room encounter.
Harvey Weinstein’s rape retrial opened in New York with prosecutors and defense lawyers giving jurors sharply different accounts of a 2013 Manhattan hotel-room encounter involving Jessica Mann, a hairstylist and actor who has previously testified against him.
The proceeding marks the third New York trial tied to the rape charge. Weinstein, 73, has pleaded not guilty and denies ever having nonconsensual sex. The charge has remained unresolved after an earlier conviction was overturned and a later jury deadlocked.
In opening statements Tuesday, Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Candace White framed the case as one about Weinstein’s influence and alleged abuse of it. “This case will come down to power, to control and to manipulation,” White told jurors, with District Attorney Alvin Bragg watching from the courtroom audience.
Defense lawyer Jacob Kaplan countered that the case is about “consent, about choice and about regret,” echoing Weinstein’s longstanding position that the encounter was consensual and later reinterpreted as a crime.
The new trial is narrower than Weinstein’s previous New York proceedings. Earlier trials included other accusers and additional charges; this one is focused on what happened between Weinstein and Mann in a hotel room in March 2013, though jurors are also expected to hear about their relationship before and after the alleged assault.
Mann has previously testified that she met Weinstein at a Los Angeles-area party in early 2013 while hoping to build an acting career. She said she sought a professional connection and later had what she described as an ambivalent consensual relationship with Weinstein, who was then married.
During a trip to New York that March, Mann said in prior testimony, she arranged a breakfast involving friends and Weinstein. She testified that Weinstein later trapped her in a hotel room, ignored her protest that she did not want to have sex, demanded she undress and grabbed her arms. She said she gave in because she wanted to leave.
The defense emphasized that Mann continued to see Weinstein after the alleged rape, accepted invitations, asked him for career help and sent him friendly messages. Mann has said she was trying not to anger a volatile and well-connected man. Kaplan told jurors the case would pit Mann’s word against her own conduct and argued that regret does not erase consent.
Weinstein, once one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers, became a central figure in the #MeToo movement after public allegations about his conduct emerged in 2017. He has been convicted of some sexual assault charges and acquitted of others in trials in New York and Los Angeles; some charges were later dismissed.
The jury of seven men and five women was selected last week. The trial is expected to take up to four weeks.
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