A Manhattan jury on Tuesday was transported back to a time when the frail man sitting before them, his pallor matching the courtroom’s ghost white walls, loomed large as the most fearsome figure in Hollywood, “the all-powerful Harvey Weinstein.”
In her opening statement at Weinstein’s Manhattan Supreme Court retrial, a prosecutor told jurors they would hear of how Weinstein wielded his power over the perfect target at the peak of his success in 2013 — a “fragile and shattered” young woman who came from a world far from the one he dominated.
“The defendant was a titan in the movie industry. He decided who was in and who was out of Hollywood,” Assistant District Attorney Candace White said.
“Jessica Mann was working three jobs,” White later said. “She was barely scraping by, and she was living out of her car.”
The disgraced Miramax founder has faced sex crimes accusations from scores of women, with the deluge that sparked his downfall so enormous it supercharged the global #MeToo movement against sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. The case on trial focuses on just one count of third-degree rape that alleges he brutally raped Mann at the DoubleTree hotel on Lexington Ave on March 18, 2013.
A jury found Weinstein had raped Mann when he first went on trial in Manhattan in 2020, in addition to sexually assaulting a separate woman, Miriam Haley. Those verdicts were overturned on appeal in 2024 based on unrelated testimony.
When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg retried the case last year, a second jury convicted the former Tinseltown titan of sexually assaulting Haley. But the panel could not reach a unanimous conclusion on Mann, leading Bragg to try the case once more. The DA watched Tuesday’s opening remarks from the second row.
Now 73, Weinstein has pleaded not guilty. His attorney, Jacob Kaplan, on Tuesday charged that Mann and Weinstein had a “mutually beneficial relationship” that she had consented to, accusing the alleged rape victim of having regret over “sleeping her way to success.”
White on Wednesday told the five women and seven men on the jury that they would not hear about any transaction that benefited Mann, with Weinstein’s promises about acting gigs and various opportunities usually following demands for sex and never materializing. She said they would hear of how he instantly fixated on Mann, then 27, after they were introduced at an engagement party in Los Angeles, Calif., in February 2013, buying the aspiring actress expensive books about the craft and committing to be her mentor.
The prosecutor said Mann would testify about Weinstein’s intense interest in her upbringing, asking her questions about growing up poor in a dairy farm town in Washington State, and being raised by an evangelical family that at times lived in a mobile home.
“He was feeling out how vulnerable she was,” the prosecutor said. “How difficult it would be to isolate her.”
Alienated by relatives after a member of her church sexually assaulted her when she was 16, Mann left home and eventually moved to LA at 25, hoping to make it as an actor, White said.
The prosecutor told jurors they would hear directly from Mann about consenting to sex with Weinstein on several occasions, but that she had unambiguously told him no during the incident at the Midtown hotel and during two other encounters in California. White said they would hear from a psychologist about how Mann’s desperate circumstances and rock-bottom self-esteem primed her for a yearslong, toxic relationship with an increasingly domineering Weinstein.
“The defendant preyed on a fragile and shattered young woman,” the prosecutor said, “someone he could control, someone he could silence without consequence.”
Wearing a navy blue suit with an American flag pinned on the lapel, a low-energy Weinstein appeared unemotional as White delivered her opening remarks. He appeared slightly more focused when his lawyer addressed the jury.
In his opening, Kaplan said jurors should not determine that one sexual encounter between Mann and Weinstein was nonconsensual if she admitted willingly engaging in others.
“She knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it,” the attorney said. “Evidence will show Ms. Mann could easily walk away and never speak to Harvey Weinstein again, but she didn’t.”
The lawyer asked jurors to acquit his client, no matter their feelings about his character.
“We’re not here to tell you to like Harvey Weinstein. We’re not here to tell you to approve that he cheated on his wife with Ms. Mann,” Kaplan said. “This case is about proof, not about popularity.”
The convicted film producer has been in custody since he was first found guilty in 2020 and is being held on Rikers Island, with periodic stays at Bellevue Hospital, while his third New York prosecution plays out. He’s experienced several health setbacks during the near-decade he’s spent on trial, having undergone major heart surgery in 2024.
Weinstein is yet to be sentenced for his 2024 conviction, which carries up to 25 years. He was also convicted of sexual assault and rape in California in 2022 and is set to continue serving a 16-year sentence for those crimes once his New York matter resolves.
The trial resumes Wednesday.