Movie producer Harvey Weinstein was due in court in New York yesterday, with the judge to decide on the future of his sexual assault case, which has been clouded by allegations that police acted improperly in the investigation that led to his arrest.
Judge James Burke was expected to make the ruling after a flurry of court papers in which Weinstein’s lawyers say the case has devolved into chaos and prosecutors say there is ample evidence to move forward to trial.
Weinstein, 66, was to put on his fiercest campaign yet to have the case thrown out, seizing on the alleged police misconduct and providing a witness who says his rape accuser pressured her to corroborate her story.
Weinstein’s lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, says the case was “irreparably tainted” by detective Nicholas DiGaudio’s alleged interference with a witness and an accuser.
“The only reasonably prudent decision would be to stop this chaos now,” Brafman said in a court filing.
Assistant District Attorney Kevin Wilson fired back, saying “there is no possibility” that the allegations against DiGaudio “in any way impaired the integrity of the grand jury or prejudiced the defendant.”
Weinstein is charged with raping a woman he knew in a hotel room in March 2013 and forcibly performing oral sex on another woman in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment.
He denies all allegations of non-consensual sex.
The case has been heavily scrutinized in the wake of the #MeToo movement, which exploded last year after numerous women made allegations against Weinstein.
Burke had a few options for his ruling.
He could have sided with Weinstein and dismissed some or all of the charges, or he could have scheduled a trial, which would be a win for prosecutors. He could also have thrown out the indictment, but given prosecutors time to seek a new one.
A dismissal of the charges would be a big setback to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr, who was criticized for declining to pursue criminal charges against Weinstein when he was accused of groping an Italian model in 2015.
Such a ruling would not rule out prosecutors bringing charges involving other women who say they were sexually assaulted by Weinstein in New York.
Burke could also have kept the indictment in place, but granted the defense’s request for an evidentiary hearing. There, police investigators could be summoned to court to answer questions about alleged misconduct.
Weinstein’s case started to turn in October when Manhattan prosecutors dropped one of the charges after evidence surfaced that DiGaudio instructed a potential witness in the case to keep some of her doubts about the veracity of the allegations to herself.
That witness never testified before the grand jury that indicted Weinstein.
Prosecutors also disclosed an allegation that DiGaudio urged the 2013 rape accuser to delete private material from her cellphones.
Prosecutors said the woman wound up not deleting anything.
Late last month, Weinstein’s lawyers said they spoke to a woman who said the rape accuser asked her to corroborate her allegations, but the friend would not “make up a story.”
The friend told investigators that Weinstein and the accuser had been “hooking up” consensually for a while and that she never heard her say anything bad about him until last year, Weinstein’s lawyer, Ben Brafman, said in a court filing.
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