Harvey Weinstein is not going to take the stand at his intercourse crimes trial in Los Angeles, the place he’s charged with seven counts of rape and sexual assault, his lawyer stated Monday.
The disgraced film mogul additionally declined to testify at his 2020 trial in Manhattan, the place he was convicted of two felonies: third-degree rape and one rely of legal sexual act within the first diploma.
He pleaded not responsible in each trials and denies all allegations of nonconsensual intercourse. He’s presently serving a 23-year jail sentence in New York.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Mark Werksman, instructed Decide Lisa B. Lench on Monday morning that his shopper wouldn’t take the stand in his personal protection.
Lench reminded Weinstein that he has a proper to testify. Weinstein confirmed that he understood.
Los Angeles prosecutors rested their case earlier than the Thanksgiving break, following almost 4 weeks of testimony from 44 witnesses.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and actor who’s married to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, provided essentially the most wrenching testimony of the trial to this point. She testified in graphic phrases concerning the night time he allegedly raped her in a lodge suite.
The trial in Los Angeles took on increased stakes for prosecutors after the New York State Courtroom of Appeals agreed in August to permit Weinstein to attraction his conviction there.
If the New York conviction is upheld, he would serve the remainder of his 23-year sentence. Whether it is overturned, his destiny would hinge on the end result of his Los Angeles trial. If he’s convicted in L.A., he may face life in jail in California.
The fees towards Weinstein in Los Angeles are two counts of rape and 5 different sexual assault counts.
Within the Nineteen Nineties and the 2000s, Weinstein and his youthful brother, Bob, have been titans of the film enterprise, producing seminal movies like “Pulp Fiction” and distributing Oscar-winning dramas equivalent to “The English Affected person,” “Shakespeare in Love” and “The King’s Speech.”
Weinstein is on trial 5 years after The New York Occasions and The New Yorker first printed explosive investigations into allegations of a sample of sexual misconduct.
The tales impressed a wider reckoning with abuses of energy in leisure and different high-profile industries that shortly grew to become often called the #MeToo motion.
