Outside, behind the fences, the spotlights of the sets are improvised by the tv begin to fade with the first light of the morning. The early risers of the 150 accredited journalists to the event of the year in the federal court in the State of New York, in the south of Manhattan, saved as queue. There are still two hours to the start of the trial against Harvey Weinstein, who was the king of Hollywood at the turn of the century, become today the incarnation of the abuse of power to obtain sex, after investigations by journalists of The New York Times and The New Yorker uncovering dozens of allegations from women who lit the wick of the Me Too.
Just eight hours before, 4,500 miles away, the Hollywood industry, on a day ruled, is held to itself in the delivery of the Golden Globes. Just two years ago, Weinstein would have presided over one of those tables, toasting with French champagne. There were Quentin Tarantino, Gwyneth Paltrow, all of your creatures dressed in gala. But on Monday, the producer plague was not more than the joke uncomfortable night. “The next presenter is in the Bird Box, a film in which the world survives covering her eyes. As all of Hollywood while working with Harvey Weinstein”, he let go of the presenter of the gala, Ricky Gervais, before the laughter embarrassed the stars.
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a rollover to a life. At 9.10 am, Weinstein came to the court in new york surrounded by his lawyers. The same spotlights were illuminating in its glory days, but no sign of red carpet. Entered the room of the 15th floor of the Court pushing a walker. He walked leaning on the apparatus, two wheels on the front legs, and two tennis balls embedded in the rear, which accompanies him from which in December he was operated on the back after a traffic accident. Suit and tie black and shirt white, disheveled, pale, disheveled. If what I was looking for is to give worth, as they say its critics, was not misguided filmmaker.
All the uniqueness, all the legend, they were out of the room when the sheriff announced that it was beginning the session. So you want to judge James Burke. Between these four walls, devoid of any pomp, not going to judge a movement. The case 02335/2018 of the New York Court is not a judgment of the abuse of power for sexual purposes. Not even the general behavior of a man that 90 women have been accused of being a predator who used his position to abuse systematically the women. It is a trial to a man who is the assistant production Mimi Haleyi is accused of having sexually abused her in 2006, and another woman, whose name is still confidential, of her rape in 2013. Up to Monday had not been filed more charges, either because the alleged crimes have been prescribed or because the alleged victims have wanted to avoid the public exposure. However, the prosecutor’s office of Los Angeles has announced today, the day the trial begins in New York, the producer faces two new charges of rape and sexual assault to two women in 2013.
“mr. Weinstein has the right to a fair trial”, he explained to the departure of the defender Donna Rotunno. “The prosecution believes it has already been convicted, and this does not work as well. We are here to remind everyone that in this great country you are innocent until proven that you are guilty”.
This is the dialectic that macará the trial. Doors for inside, just the fact that the majority of the hundreds of people who occupy the decrepit wooden benches are journalists difference to this judgment of those who are held by the nearly 1,500 allegations of rape that occur each year in the city. Door to outside, impossible to escape the fact that, in fact, those allegations for rape increased by 22.4% from 2017 to 2018, and that grew almost continuously every month since the allegations against Weinstein detonated a global recognition of what constitutes sexual harassment and sexual assault.
that is why it is so important to the process of selection of the jury, which will begin this Tuesday and can take up to two weeks. The notoriety of the case has led to the Justice officials to send summonses to 2,000 potential jurors, 500 of whom responded, which should be reduced to 12 jurors holders and six alternates. Putting to test the patience of the judge, who has already lost briefly in the hour and a half that lasted the first day destined to cumbersome court procedures, the parties shall review their background, their beliefs, their biases. His ability, finally, to abstract from all the noise and reach their verdict based only on what is heard between these four walls.
Outside of those walls, in the street, actresses Rosanna Arquette and Rose McGowan, along with other women who have accused Weinstein of sexual assaults, spoke before the cameras. “It’s over the time of the sexual harassment on the job, said Arquette. “No more blaming survivors. Gone is the pervasive culture of silence that has enabled abusers as a Weinstein”.
Three hits to the defense
On the first day, the judge was hard with the defense of Weinstein. Rejected a witness who proposed, detective Nicholas DiGaudio, section of the case by concealing information and that it prevented the prosecution to have a complainant is more on trial. Also denied the defense request that the jury be completely isolated during the trial, hosted in a place without access to sources of information, in order to avoid contamination a case as in the media. The prosecution called it “degrading and humiliating” for the witness interviews that gave this weekend, the defender Donna Rotunno, and the judge ordered him matter-of-factly “remove them” from their communications to the public.
