Jury selection underway for sex assault retrial of Harvey Weinstein

Jeanmarcmorandini.com

17/04/2025

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00:00...the process of seeding jurors happening in the same Lower Manhattan courthouse

00:04where Weinstein was convicted of sex assault back in 2020.

00:08That conviction overturned last year, you might recall,

00:10because the judge had improperly allowed certain testimony from women

00:14whose accusations were not part of the criminal charges.

00:17Weinstein has pleaded not guilty to all three of these charges.

00:21I'm at Aziz, reporter Darla Miles, who is in the courtroom today.

00:24She is live in Lower Manhattan. Darla.

00:25Bill and Liz, almost every prospective juror today raised their hand

00:32when they were asked by the judge if they had heard of Harvey Weinstein.

00:36So finding an impartial jury in this case is going to be a challenge.

00:41In one case, you could hear an audible gasp by one prospective juror

00:44when she overheard that this jury duty summons today was for that case of Harvey Weinstein.

00:51And there was another prospective juror who kind of got excited and waved at him.

00:57Five years after the rape and sexual conviction of Harvey Weinstein,

01:01a retrial is set to begin in an entirely new landscape.

01:05Harvey Weinstein did the crime. He deserves to serve his time.

01:09The groundswell of the Me Too movement? Years in the rearview mirror.

01:13We're going to do the best we can to make sure anyone who's going to sit on the jury

01:18does not have any preconceived notions or predisposed ideas of what a verdict should be

01:24and that they only base their verdict on the evidence that they're going to hear

01:27during this apparently two-month-long trial.

01:31As the Manhattan DA's office and attorneys for the 73-year-old former Hollywood mogul

01:35begin the process of selecting a whole new jury of 12 people,

01:39Weinstein's defense, this time bringing in high-profile jury consultant Joellen Demetrius,

01:45most recently seen helping select the Daniel Penny jury, whose expertise goes back decades,

01:51including successfully picking a jury for the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

01:55Unlike probably every case going on in this courthouse right now,

01:58where a jury comes in and hears a case, they don't know who the defendant is,

02:02they don't know who the facts are, they don't have any background, that's not the case here.

02:06No, that is not the case here, with one dismissed juror saying,

02:10I don't like the guy, he's a really bad guy.

02:13One person telling the court, I was a victim of sexual assault.

02:17And another saying, I don't see how anyone can be impartial.

02:21I think it's important that we see justice in this case for all of the women who have come forward against Harvey,

02:26not just the ones who have had the opportunity to testify against him.

02:30The new trial will include an additional count of criminal sex acts,

02:33stemming from a 2006 incident at a Manhattan hotel.

02:36But what will not be a part of this trial, the testimony of three women about unindicted allegations of prior bad acts.

02:44What matters here is the facts.

02:46And I'm confident that a jury will find that these acts were not consensual, and they will convict.

02:51I'm confident that there will be justice in this case.

02:58Now, attorneys for Harvey Weinstein said earlier this afternoon that they were hoping to seat a jury by Thursday or Friday

03:06so that they can begin opening statements.

03:08But today, not one single juror was seated.

03:12So that remains to be seen.

03:14Reporting live in lower Manhattan, Darla Miles, Channel 7 Eyewitness News.

03:18All right, Darla.

03:18Thank you.

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