Prosecution rests at Harvey Weinstein’s Los Angeles trial {#Sec1} =====================================================
The Harvey Weinstein sexual-misconduct trial at Los Angeles Superior Court is now in its fourth week. The most recent session of the trial, in July, had to be abruptly cancelled because one of the jurors complained to the court about not feeling safe at the courthouse, and a second refused to listen to the case that she believed was clearly criminal. It was then adjourned until September.
The trial is being prosecuted by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office of Special Prosecutions, with the support of the Los Angeles Police Department.
As they did from the beginning, the defense counsel in the trial are putting on a series of witnesses, hoping to demonstrate that the criminal case against Weinstein is a hoax, or that Weinstein was a scapegoat for someone else’s alleged sexual-misconduct.
The first witness called by Weinstein’s defense was former British actress Kate Winslet, who testified that she had a one-night stand with Weinstein in 2013 and a second with him in 2014, during which he made a pass at her that made her “feel sick to her stomach.”
The prosecution has continued with the testimony of two more accusers: Rebecca Meisel, who alleges that Weinstein forced her in a threesome with his former PR firm, and former Miss USA contestant Rosie O’Donnell, who testified that Weinstein made advances and unwanted sexual acts against her in 1997 and 1998.
Rosie O’Donnell was the first woman to have been allowed on the Weinstein defense witness list. O’Donnell testified that Weinstein first propositioned and propositioned her, making sexual advances that made her feel “extremely uncomfortable.”
“I have never had a producer before,” O’Donnell said. She also testified that Weinstein was “very possessive of his power over me and took control of what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.”
“I thought the power that he was exercising over me was power too far,” she continued.
“I mean, I had been on a handful of sets,