Weinstein Jury Has Only 2 White Women as Prosecutors Protest

“They are systematically eliminating every young white woman on this jury,” the lead prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi, said in court on Thursday afternoon. She renewed the same protest vigorously on Friday, noting the defense had objected to “every single white woman.”

The full jury was seated on Friday afternoon, ending an arduous two-week process and setting the stage for opening statements and testimony to start next week. Over the last two days, Weinstein’s lawyers successfully used their right to reject a number of possible jurors for no reason to limit the white women on the panel, prosecutors said.

Illuzzi did not say in court why having few young white women on the jury would be problematic for the prosecution, but the district attorney’s office appeared to be operating on the theory that such jurors were likely to be sympathetic to Weinstein’s accusers.

The case against Weinstein hinges almost entirely on whether the jury believes two women who say that he sexually assaulted them, or accepts his lawyers’ contention that the encounters were consensual. The accusers did not report the sexual assaults to law enforcement for years, and some kept in touch with Weinstein after the incidents.

Defense lawyers said their resistance to seating certain people had to do with their responses on a questionnaire, which, in their minds, raised doubts about whether the prospective jurors could be fair. Weinstein’s lead lawyer, Donna Rotunno, said the challenges “had nothing to do with race or sex, frankly.”

Prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers say that trials are often won or lost in jury selection, as lawyers for both sides maneuver to seat people they feel they can persuade.

The defense lawyers also sought to disqualify anyone who had been a victim of sexual assault or who knew someone who had been, greatly reducing the pool of women who might sit in judgment of their client.

The trial of Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer, is one of the most anticipated proceedings in recent years. Allegations against him helped ignite the global #MeToo movement, a reckoning over sexual assault and harassment by powerful and influential men in the workplace.

Weinstein, 67, is charged with raping one woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and forcing oral sex on a second woman in his Manhattan apartment in 2006. He is also charged with predatory sexual assault, which exposes Weinstein to a lifetime prison sentence.

Four other women will be called to testify about their allegations that Weinstein sexually assaulted them. Those incidents are too old to be charged as separate crimes, but prosecutors have won permission to bring them up in an effort to prove a pattern of behavior.

Weinstein has said that all the encounters were consensual.

Jury selection has been full of drama since it began last week. Hundreds of panelists immediately said they could not be fair and were dismissed. A flash mob protested Weinstein outside the courthouse. The supermodel Gigi Hadid popped up in the jury pool and was eventually excused.

One potential juror was dismissed after she said that she knew a woman who once had “an encounter” with the producer. The judge threatened to hold another prospective juror in contempt of the court after he had asked his nearly 7,000 social media followers how he might use a high-profile case to promote a new novel.

Despite what Weinstein has called in court papers a “carnival-like atmosphere,” the jury and three alternates were chosen by 1 p.m. Friday. The alternate jurors, who will serve only if one of the first 12 jurors must withdraw, include a white man, a Hispanic woman and black woman.

As both sides started picking jurors on Thursday, the judge overseeing the case, James M. Burke, acknowledged that many of the potential jurors had likely read about Weinstein. Still, he said, the goal was to find people who could set aside what they had read, be fair and judge the case solely on the evidence in the courtroom.

“This trial is not a referendum on the #MeToo movement,” Burke said. “It is not a referendum on sexual harassment. It is not a referendum on women’s rights.” He added, “The sole issue is for you to decide whether or not the defendant committed certain acts, which constitute a particular crime, and decide whether or not the facts have been proven.”

The 12 jurors include a public housing worker, an Upper East Side businessman, an East Harlem security guard, the managing partner of an investment firm, a banking executive, a married father of two, the co-founder of a startup, a real estate tax accountant and a lawyer whose sister is a federal prosecutor in Chicago.

One of the two white women on the jury is a writer with an upcoming novel that describes relations between young women and “predatory” older men. Defense lawyers, who were out of challenges, argued that she should not serve because she had not revealed details about her book in her questionnaire.

“She was not forthcoming about the book, about the subject matter of the book, predatory older men,” said Damon Cheronis, another of Weinstein’s lawyers. “She lied under oath.”

Prosecutors noted that she had said on her form she was a novelist. The defense asked for a mistrial over her inclusion, but Burke denied the motion.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

On Thursday, Weinstein’s lawyers eliminated several white women from the jury pool, including one who had friends in college who had been sexually assaulted. Another said her mother had been physically and sexually abused; a third had written a book about women in the workplace and had friends in the entertainment industry; and a fourth had also written a book on women’s issues.

Margaret Bull Kovera, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said the maneuvering by the defense and prosecution over white, female jurors made sense. Weinstein’s accusers are white women “and of some social status,” she said. “One might think that women similar to them would be sympathetic to the complainants.”

On Friday, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, Arthur Aidala, argued that one young white woman should not be selected because “she doesn’t have the life skills and wasn’t even alive when these events took place.”

“People dated differently and the rules of dating were different,” he said. “She’d have to read the history books to know what took place.”

The questioning of the panelists hinted at the issues the jurors will wrestle with. Defense lawyers, for instance, asked potential jurors if they believed a person could have consensual sex with someone to get ahead in their career. They also asked people if they could tune out the avalanche of news coverage on the producer and focus only on evidence in the courtroom.

Prosecutors asked whether jurors could accept that someone might not immediately report a rape or cut off all ties with her attacker. “Does everyone appreciate that someone can be suffering in their personal life and put on a brave face and be happy in their public life?” Illuzzi asked.

Prosecutors also asked whether potential jurors could look past Weinstein’s current physical appearance. Weinstein, who had back surgery recently, has shuffled into court slightly hunched with the help of a walker and often looks frail.

“Is there anything about Harvey Weinstein looking at him today that makes you feel that there’s no way that man’s a rapist?” one of the prosecutors, Meghan Hast, asked the potential jurors. “Anybody feel that?”

No one responded.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .

Weinstein Jury Has Only 2 White Women as Prosecutors Protest

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