Harvey Weinstein was forced to move his seat at his Los Angeles sex crimes trial on Wednesday after a sheriff’s deputy said he was staring at the jury.
The 70-year-old on trial for allegedly sexually abusing five women between 2003 and 2014 was improperly sitting at the defense table—allowing him to look directly at the 12 individuals in the jury box, according to The Wrap. The alleged staring occurred as the first of the eight women set to testify against Weinstein said he raped her inside a Beverly Hills hotel room in 2013.
The assault, she said, included Weinstein forcing her to perform oral sex before he made her go into the bathroom—where he attempted to penetrate her vagina with his fingers and penis before eventually masturbating after having “trouble with an erection.” The woman, identified in court as Jane Doe 1, said that Weinstein threatened her afterward, telling her: “You don’t know me.”
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Weinstein’s lawyer on Wednesday insisted their client was not doing anything wrong and asked the judge to allow him to stay seated alongside the table because his wheelchair took up a lot of space. The request was denied and Weinstein was forced to move out of the jury’s eye line, though The Wrap reported he almost immediately resumed staring their way.
A Weinstein spokesperson hit back at claims that the toppled Hollywood titan was intentionally staring at anyone.
“Harvey is wheeled in with help, helped by the guards or lawyers into a stationary chair, and that is where he sits,” Juda Engelmayer told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “He is trying to not make eye contact with the jury; he is afraid to look at them and feels uneasy about it, imagining what they might be thinking about him.”
The spokesperson added that Weinstein “has been feeling confident, but uneasy” about his second sex-crimes trial. Engelmayer went on to suggest prosecutors were using issues—like Weinstein staring at jurors—to bolster their case portraying Weinstein as a powerful man who systematically assaulted women and attempted to silence them.
Already convicted of sex crimes in New York, Weinstein is serving a 23-year sentence in the Empire State—though the case is on appeal.
On Thursday, several prosecutorial witnesses testified to support Jane Doe 1’s allegations—including Weinstein’s former limo driver. Alfred “Freddy” Barouth testified that on the night of the alleged February 2013 attack at the Beverly Hills Hotel Mr. C, he dropped off Weinstein at the Peninsula hotel after midnight. The driver added the two hotels are about a six-minute drive from one another and that Weinstein would frequent Mr. C for dinner or for industry events.
The driver also provided insight into what it was like working for the disgraced producer until 2017, noting that he was often rushing Weinstein from one event to another.
“If we were running late, there was no such thing as a red light. If we were in a hurry, we would go through it,” he said, earning a laugh from the courtroom.
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