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Sniffin' the Slayer
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from THR
Is Hollywood's #MeToo movement poised for a very public letdown?
On the eve of Harvey Weinstein's pivotal pretrial hearing on Dec. 20, the New York criminal case against the mogul looks to be on much shakier ground than in the court of public opinion, legal experts say.
"This is the prosecutor's worst-case scenario," says criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, citing a series of setbacks in recent weeks in which Weinstein lawyer Ben Brafman undermined the credibility of the New York police department, the grand jury process, and the three women who accused the disgraced producer of rape and sexual assault.
The prosecution suffered its biggest blow in October when Judge James Burke tossed a count involving allegations made by Lucia Evans, one of the original accusers in Ronan Farrow's New Yorker exposé, who said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004. Evans' grand jury testimony was thrown out because an NYPD detective failed to pass along information to prosecutors that contradicted the former actress' account.
In a previous motion, Brafman claimed that Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon was given information that would contradict Evans' testimony, and "it was the prosecutor who unethically withheld this information from the Grand Jury and it is they who are now lying to the Court." Perhaps most controversial, Brafman also presented a series of emails to Weinstein from accuser Miriam "Mimi" Haleyi, who wrote endearments like "Miss you too," "Lots of Love" and "xxxxx" in the years after a 2006 encounter in New York in which she says she was sexually assaulted by the producer.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who was brought on by Brafman as a consultant, says there are more emails the defense plans to present as exculpatory evidence, even as lawyers for accusers complain about the strategy out of confidentiality concerns.
“You can’t both accuse someone publicly and then hide behind privacy to keep highly relevant evidence out,” says Dershowitz. “The evidence I’ve seen doesn’t embarrass anyone. It suggests a loving relationship that seems fairly commonplace. For people who say, ‘This is the way that people behave [after an assault] and you can’t make judgments on these things,’ well that’s for the public to judge and for courts to judge.”
Dershowitz adds, “I believe that if a grand jury and the public were to see these emails, they would come to a very different conclusion about what happened. The emails show consensual relationships between Weinstein and his accusers both before and after the alleged crimes allegedly occurred.”
Is Hollywood's #MeToo movement poised for a very public letdown?
On the eve of Harvey Weinstein's pivotal pretrial hearing on Dec. 20, the New York criminal case against the mogul looks to be on much shakier ground than in the court of public opinion, legal experts say.
"This is the prosecutor's worst-case scenario," says criminal defense attorney Mark Geragos, citing a series of setbacks in recent weeks in which Weinstein lawyer Ben Brafman undermined the credibility of the New York police department, the grand jury process, and the three women who accused the disgraced producer of rape and sexual assault.
The prosecution suffered its biggest blow in October when Judge James Burke tossed a count involving allegations made by Lucia Evans, one of the original accusers in Ronan Farrow's New Yorker exposé, who said Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him in 2004. Evans' grand jury testimony was thrown out because an NYPD detective failed to pass along information to prosecutors that contradicted the former actress' account.
In a previous motion, Brafman claimed that Assistant District Attorney Joan Illuzzi-Orbon was given information that would contradict Evans' testimony, and "it was the prosecutor who unethically withheld this information from the Grand Jury and it is they who are now lying to the Court." Perhaps most controversial, Brafman also presented a series of emails to Weinstein from accuser Miriam "Mimi" Haleyi, who wrote endearments like "Miss you too," "Lots of Love" and "xxxxx" in the years after a 2006 encounter in New York in which she says she was sexually assaulted by the producer.
Attorney Alan Dershowitz, who was brought on by Brafman as a consultant, says there are more emails the defense plans to present as exculpatory evidence, even as lawyers for accusers complain about the strategy out of confidentiality concerns.
“You can’t both accuse someone publicly and then hide behind privacy to keep highly relevant evidence out,” says Dershowitz. “The evidence I’ve seen doesn’t embarrass anyone. It suggests a loving relationship that seems fairly commonplace. For people who say, ‘This is the way that people behave [after an assault] and you can’t make judgments on these things,’ well that’s for the public to judge and for courts to judge.”
Dershowitz adds, “I believe that if a grand jury and the public were to see these emails, they would come to a very different conclusion about what happened. The emails show consensual relationships between Weinstein and his accusers both before and after the alleged crimes allegedly occurred.”
