Court hears closing arguments in Weinstein trial

Jurors are set to start deliberating Tuesday, their task put off a day because court is closed on Monday for Presidents Day.

The prosecution and defence left the panel of seven men and five women with plenty to think about as they summed up their cases for and against convicting the movie producer in closing arguments on back-to-back days, Thursday and Friday.

Weinstein, 67, is charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on another woman, TV and film production assistant Mimi Haleyi, in 2006.

Jurors will also be weighing actress Annabella Sciorra’s account of a mid-1990s rape in considering charges alleging Weinstein is a sexual predator, even though it is too old to be charged on its own.

Weinstein maintains any sexual conduct was consensual.

The closing arguments were the highlight of the fourth week of testimony and arguments at the landmark #MeToo trial.

Weinstein’s lawyer Donna Rotunno suggested Thursday that prosecutors created an “alternative universe” and a “sinister tale” because they lacked evidence to convict the former studio boss.

“In their story, they have created a universe that strips adult women of common sense, autonomy and responsibility,” Ms Rotunno said. “It is offensive, actually.”

Ms Rotunno, a #MeToo critic, argued that the two women Weinstein is charged with attacking were opportunists who willingly latched on to the powerful producer and acquiesced to sex because they thought it would help their careers.

Ms Rotunno, continuing a theme of the defence’s case, seized on the women’s warm emails and other communications with Weinstein that continued for months and years after the alleged attacks.

Referring to prosecutors, she said: “In their universe, (Weinstein’s accusers) are not even responsible for sitting at their computers sending emails to someone across the country.”

“In this script, the powerful man is the villain, and he’s so unattractive and large that no woman would ever want to sleep with him voluntarily. Regret does not exist in this world, only regret renamed as rape,” the lawyer continued.

Wrapping up remarks that went on for more than four and a half hours, she told jurors: “Facts matter, evidence matters, and when this case is over, we know that you’ll do the right thing because justice demands it.”

As he left court Thursday, Weinstein said he “loved” Ms Rotunno’s closing. “I made The King’s Speech. It was the queen’s speech,” he quipped.

Prosecutor Joan Illuzzi-Orbon on Friday and spoke about another universe, one in which Weinstein’s accusers “were merely ants that he could step on without consequences”.

Weinstein worried about Sciorra because she was an established star but treated other victims like “complete disposables” because they were not in his Hollywood orbit and he had the power to make sure they wouldn’t be, Ms Illuzzi-Orbon said.

One way that Weinstein kept the women quiet was by making them feel embarrassed and ashamed, as if they had done something wrong, when it was him forcing them into awkward situations, like asking them to give him a massage, she said.

“What he wants to do is he wants to get them in a situation where they feel stupid. If you feel stupid and belittled, belittled, stupid people do not complain,” the prosecutor told jurors.

She implored jurors to focus on Weinstein’s conduct, not what the alleged victims in the case may have said or done with him afterwards.

For instance, she said, the woman Weinstein is charged with raping could have been madly in love and had his name tattooed on her arm, but “he still would not be allowed to rape her”, she said.

Ms Illuzzi-Orbon finished her three-hour talk by reminding jurors how painful it had been for Weinstein’s accusers to come forward, and how, by testifying, they had “sacrificed their dignity, their privacy and their peace” to seek justice.

“They didn’t come for a beauty contest, didn’t come for money, didn’t come for fame, they came to be heard,” she said.