- [Reporter] Allegations
by numerous women who say the Hollywood mogul
sexually harassed them. - A pattern of company
meetings that they thought were little more than cover
for predatory advances on vulnerable women. - [Reporter] Decades of sexual assault and serious sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood mega
producer Harvey Weinstein. - [Narrator] In October of 2017, Harvey Weinstein was
accused of sexual harassment in reports published
by the "New York Times" and "The New Yorker, citing dozens of allegations that detailed inappropriate
sexual behavior, harassment, and abuse. More than 100 women have since opened up with sexual assault
allegations against Weinstein helping to spark the Me Too
Movement across Hollywood and other industries. - [Woman] Honor the
defendant is before the court charged with two violent B
Felonies for two separate forceable sexual assaults
against two different women. - [Narrator] In May 2018, Weinstein was arrested
by the NYPD and indicted on charges by two women
of rape, criminal sex act, sex abuse, and sexual misconduct. The allegations about Weinstein's
casting couch behavior bring to light a practice
that's been common throughout Hollywood over the years. Ken Auletta nearly broke the
Weinstein story years ago, and is currently writing
a biography about him. - If you go back in movie
history, Hollywood history, there are untold examples
of abusive behavior by studio heads. The casting couch which is
the phrase that Harvey used. And there was a casting couch
and young starlets succumbed in exchange for roles
in movies, et cetera. But very rare was the
incidence of these studio heads actually raping a woman, and doing some of the
things that Harvey Weinstein is accused of doing. So that's different. Has there ever been a criminal trial like Harvey's going through? No, there have been scandals
in the movie business over the years, but the Harvey trial is studio head trial. And you know the consequences
of losing that trial is life imprisonment. The minimum sentence to rape
is twenty years to life, unheard of. - [Narrator] Despite Weinstein's
bid to move the trial outside of New York City, it began January 6 of 2020, at the courthouse in downtown Manhattan. - A big question for the trial
is how will the jury react to all this? How will they react to what
they know now about Harvey? - [Narrator] Ari Wilkenfeld
is a civil attorney who specializes in sexual harassment. He represented an accuser of Matt Lauer. - We're dealing with a
binary, did this happen? Did this person say yes? Was physical force used? It's a yes or no question. The jury doesn't really get
an opportunity to say maybe it was in the middle. - His people worry about that. They worry that people don't
go in as a blank slate. They go in knowing who
Harvey Weinstein was. So it's not a foregone
conclusion that Harvey is either gonna be declared
innocent or guilty. We don't know yet. - Today was a good day for Mr. Weinstein. I think it shows the strength of our case. - [Narrator] The trial is
expected to last two months beginning with the jury selection process. The prosecution and defense, each are looking for
different kinds of jurors. - If this was a civil case
like the kinds that I try, in terms of selecting jurors, the types of people that the plaintiff would be looking for I believe, would be people who have
heard about the case, and have pretty well
formed opinions about it. If I were a defense attorney
looking to pick a jury for this case on the civil side, I believe I'd be looking for
people who haven't formed a strong opinion yet about the case, and probably people who
are a little bit more rigid in their thinking about
how a victim behaves. - There are two women
that have brought charges and will testify against Weinstein, but their lingering
correspondence with him after the incidents
that they accuse him of, makes things difficult
for the prosecutors. - The two women who bring
charges against Harvey, one allegedly occurred in 2006, the other occurred in 2013. And one of the issues
that arise of any trial, when something happens so long ago, was there evidence of that? Is the only evidence that you told friends or loved ones about it, or family? Harvey's defense is that
what he did was consensual. - What you ultimately end up
with is a swearing contest. Both witnesses get sworn in, they're telling completely
divergent stories, and you have to convince
the jury that your client is telling the truth. Through a combination of
having credible testimony from your client and also
being able to punch holes in the other side's
client is how these cases are won and lost. - The two women wrote him
emails after his alleged acts claiming things like I miss you, can I come to a screening, etc. - In cases where there is
ongoing either relationships or interactions between an alleged victim, and the alleged accused, it's always a problem. Victims of sexual violence, sexual assault, harassment at work, they often behave in ways
that seem counterintuitive to people who have never been victimized. They may maintain a romantic relationship with the person who has harmed them, which would seem to indicate
that there was no problem. When people are assaulted
either by a family member or a co-worker or by anyone
who belongs to a community in which they have to regularly interact, that there is enormous
pressure on the victim to figure out some way to
make the original act go away, to clean it somehow. That's one of the harder
things to explain to a juror. - [Narrator] The goal
of the defense will be to discredit the women taking the stand. - They have to attack the
women's credibility on the stand in order for Harvey to be exonerated. - In civil harassment work, and in also criminal harassment work, the defense would rely on
what is horrifically titled the nuts and sluts defense, which is if you've got a victim, you make her look like she's
either mentally deranged, or promiscuous, or some
other way asking for it, but not to be trusted. - [Narrator] However,
like the Cosby trial, the judge has enacted a
rule that allows other women who haven't brought charges to testify on Weinstein's behaviors. - One thing is really
significant in this case, the judge has evoked something
called a Molineux Rule, this was something
evoked in the Cosby case. If you remember Bill Cosby's case, the first trial ended in hung jury. The judge then in the second trial evoked with the Molineux Rule
and allowed five women to testify that the
behavior that the woman who is accusing Cosby of
sexual violence to her, he did the same thing to the five of them, and so that became a defining
moment in the jury's mind. The judge in this case, Judge Burke, has evoked the Molineux rule, and is allowing three women to testify that he did it to them. And that's a setback for Harvey. - [Narrator] At this moment, it's difficult to say which
direction the trial could take and what will happen
afterward for Weinstein. - If Harvey is not convicted, I think he will try and get
back in the movie business. That's what he loves, that's what he's good at. I think it'd be very
hard for him to navigate that road back however, because whatever happens
in the criminal trial, the public believes he's a predator. And so I can't imagine him succeeding and people wanting to
be in business with him. - We have a term in law, which is you can't unring a bell. That's used when you
present evidence to a jury and then you take it away
later on and say ignore that. And the lawyer always says, you can't unring a bell. You can't unhear what you've heard. You can't unsee what you've seen. And I don't think any of us, can unexperience what we've experienced in the last two plus years. I don't think there's any going back. Stay tuned to Variety for
all the latest information. (soft music)
