Harvey Weinstein jury returns for second day deliberations

The Harvey Weinstein jury asked to hear the testimony of one of his main accuser’s again and see email exchanges between the pair as they returned for a second day of deliberations in his New York rape trial.

The jury listened on Wednesday as a court reporter read back Mimi Haleyi’s testimony of the night Weinstein allegedly forcibly performed oral sex on her when she had her period in his apartment in 2006.

Jurors scribbled in their notepads when details of Haleyi saying ‘no, no, no’ during the alleged assault was read out. 

They listened carefully as they heard her say how Weinstein ‘came towards me and lunged at me, trying to kiss me’. 

Some male jurors looked uncomfortable as Haleyi’s testimony about Weinstein ripping out her tampon and forcing himself upon her was read out. 

Weinstein, who repeatedly shook his head dismissively as the testimony was read, has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting Haleyi and also raping aspiring actress Jessica Mann in 2013. 

In addition to hearing the testimony, the jury of seven men and five women had also requested to see the email exchanges between Haleyi and Weinstein that were used as evidence in the trial. 

They also asked the judge to clarify the charges Weinstein faces in regarding to Haleyi’s allegations.

Judge James Burke had earlier said the emails would be provided to the jury on a safe laptop in the deliberation room.

He said he couldn’t given them a transcript of her testimony, which is why it was read out by a court reporter instead.  

Haleyi alleges Weinstein sexually assaulted her after he got her a job working on Project Runway.

She testified that she and Weinstein had sex at a hotel two weeks later even though she didn’t want to be intimate.

Weinstein’s lawyers have argued that is evidence he didn’t coerce her during the first encounter either. 

During their deliberations on Tuesday, the jury asked to see a blueprint of Weinstein’s apartment where he is accused of assaulting Haleyi. The jury sought clarification for the legal definition of terms like consent and forcible compulsion. 

They also requested to see an email Weinstein sent to his private investigator listing certain accusers he feared would come forward as ‘red flags’. 

Jurors will spend six hours a day for as long as it takes to reach a verdict on the five sex crimes charges against Weinstein.  

Weinstein’s lead defense lawyer Donna Rotunno sat in court on Wednesday wearing her $3,000 Balmain leather coat and Gucci scarf after the judge refused her request to close some of the windows.  

Earlier, Weinstein’s lawyers had made a second attempt to have a juror who wrote a novel about predatory older men excluded from the jury.

One of Weinstein’s lawyers, Damon Cheronis, renewed a request he made Tuesday to boot a juror from the case because of her online review, posted during the trial, of Kate Elizabeth Russell’s debut novel ‘My Dark Vanessa’.

The novel is about a relationship between a 15-year-old female student and a 42-year-old male teacher in 2000. In 2017, the former student is encouraged to come forward and tell her story, amid the #MeToo movement, in which women have accused powerful men in business, entertainment, news media and politics of sexual misconduct.

The judge denied the request, saying: ‘My finding is just that she hasn’t done anything wrong.’

The same juror wrote a novel about young women and ‘predatory’ older men. The defense had tried to exclude her from the jury before the trial began.

In total, the ex-movie mogul is facing five charges: First degree and third degree rape for Mann and a criminal sexual act for Haleyi’s forced oral sex allegation. He is also charged with predatory sexual assault for both women.

The most serious charge, predatory sexual assault, requires jurors to decide two things: If he raped Sopranos actress Annabella Sciorra in the mid-1990s and if he committed one of the charged acts. 

Sciorra testified at trial about Weinstein allegedly raping her in her Manhattan apartment. 

Her testimony was a crucial for prosecutors to prove predatory sex assault and establish a pattern of serious sex crimes. Her accusation is too old to be the basis for criminal charges on its own. 

With the way the verdict form is designed, jurors will likely be spending a lot of time weighing Sciorra’s rape allegations, which could act as an aggravating factor to support a predatory sexual assault charge that carries a potential life sentence. 

The deliberations came after Judge James Burke slammed Weinstein’s lead defense attorney, Donna Rotunno, for an op-ed that was published by Newsweek on Saturday in which she appealed for jurors to acquit her client.  

‘I want to caution you about the tentacles of your public relations juggernaut,’ the judge told Rotunno. 

e has now banned Weinstein’s defense team from speaking to the media until after the trial ends. 

Rotunno told Burke that the opinion piece, titled ‘Jurors in my client Harvey Weinstein’s case must look past the headlines’, was not intended to address the jury directly.

‘This is an op-ed about the jury system as a whole, about the criminal justice system as a whole,’ she said.   

In the op-ed, Rotunno said jurors were asked to avoid all media coverage and outside influences but questioned whether anyone thought it was ‘realistically possible’ in a ‘high-profile case like Harvey Weinstein’s’. 

‘I implore the members of this jury to do what they know is right and was expected of them from the moment they were called upon to serve their civic duty in a court of law,’ she wrote. 

‘The facts are the facts. Harvey Weinstein is innocent. His fate hangs in the balance, and the world is watching.’