Jury selection begins in Los Angeles on Monday in the eight-week trial of disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, who is serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault in New York, and who now faces different allegations including several that prosecutors say occurred during a pivotal Oscar week in Los Angeles.
Weinstein has been indicted on four counts of rape and seven other sexual assault counts involving five women, who will appear in court as Jane Does to tell their stories. He has pleaded not guilty. Four more women will be allowed to take the stand to give accounts of Weinstein sexual assaults that did not lead to charges, but which prosecutors hope will show jurors he had a propensity for committing such acts.
It was during Oscars week in 2013, when Jennifer Lawrence would win an Academy Award for the Weinstein Co.’s Silver Linings Playbook that four of the 11 alleged crimes took place. Like most of the incidents in the indictments, they happened under the guise of business meetings at luxury hotels in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles
By the time stories about him in The New York Times and The New Yorker in October of 2017 brought about his downfall, “his stature changed, he was no longer the king of Oscar, which was really what made him vulnerable,” said Kim Masters, editor at large for The Hollywood Reporter.