NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein's defense urged jurors Tuesday to acquit him and put an end to a #MeToo-era rape case that has gone to trial three times, while prosecutors pressed to vied to restore a onetime conviction that got unwound.
Weinstein, the former Hollywood honcho who has been imprisoned on various sex crime convictions since 2020, watched quietly as the two sides made their closing arguments about whether he raped hairstylist and actor Jessica Mann in a New York hotel in March 2013.
"She has taken on a false narrative about all of this," Weinstein lawyer Marc Agnifilo said.
“She has absolutely no motive to lie. None,” prosecutor Nicole Blumberg countered.
Jurors, who are expected to start deliberating Wednesday, will have to sift through the complexities of a yearslong relationship between Weinstein and Mann.
They met in early 2013, when she was trying to make it big in Hollywood. She testified that she anticipated a professional connection, was taken aback when he started making sexual advances but decided to have a relationship with the then-married, Oscar-winning producer.
A few weeks later, according to Mann, Weinstein abruptly took a room at a Doubletree hotel where she and a friend were staying. When she accompanied Weinstein upstairs to tell him she didn't want a sexual interlude, she testified, he trapped her in the room, grabbed her arms, insisted she undress, went into the bathroom for a time, and then raped her.
“He just treated me like he owned me,” she testified last month.
Weinstein didn't testify, but his defense contends the encounter was consensual and part of a caring relationship that Mann fostered and leaned on until Weinstein's #MeToo downfall in 2017. That was when news reports about allegations against him propelled a global campaign against sexual assault and sexual harassment. He has said he behaved "wrongly" but never assaulted anyone.
He was convicted in 2020 of raping Mann, got the conviction overturned, then saw a jury deadlock on it at a retrial last year.
In summations Tuesday, Agnifilo suggested that parts of Mann's account were ill-supported or implausible. He underscored the warm email exchanges and continued get-togethers she had with Weinstein before and after the alleged rape — and a musing, diary-like note she wrote to herself two days after the encounter. In the note, she expresses her misgivings about her emotional attachment in a nonexclusive relationship, asks whether she loves "him or the idea of him," questions her "woulds and would nots," and worries about being "a 'bad' person."
The note doesn't name the man, but Agnifilo asserted it was about Weinstein and that its silence about any alleged assault spoke volumes. Rather, the lawyer contended, “this is how she's falling in love with him” and grappling with feelings of transgressing the values of her religious upbringing.
Agnifilo said the two had “a sweet, loving, supportive relationship,” noting that Weinstein encouraged Mann’s acting ambitions, helped her land a hairstyling job, provided emotional support during her father’s terminal illness and tried to send her money — which she declined — when she was broke.
Blumberg, the prosecutor, scoffed at that portrayal.
“This was not some four-year, loving relationship. This was a woman who got manipulated by that man,” she said.
“Did a part of her love him? Absolutely. But did she consent to having sexual intercourse with the defendant inside the Doubletree hotel on March 18, 2013? Absolutely not,” Blumberg said. “No means no -- to most people. You know who no doesn’t mean no to? Harvey Weinstein.”
Whatever the outcome of the trial, the former movie producer and studio boss still will stand convicted of other sex crimes in New York and California, though he is appealing those convictions. If convicted in the current trial, Weinstein, 73, could face up to four years in prison — less time than he already has served.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they agree to be named, as Mann has done.