A lawyer for infamous #MeToo perpetrator Harvey Weinstein was promptly shut down on Friday after requesting that Judge James Burke alter the jury selection process to ensure that it is “fair,” according to Deadline.
“Most people do not speak in front of the international media,” Arthur Aidala, an attorney for Weinstein, told Burke, according to Variety. “That’s not a normal case. I don’t think there is any other case in this building where a juror is going to say something and it’s going to be [covered by the media].”
Aidala presented individual jury selection as a solution to the problem, to which Burke promptly responded “denied,” reports the news agency. After Aidala protested that Burke hadn’t even read his motion, which is 14 pages long, the judge remarked that he would read the letter but quipped that he is “generally familiar with this area of the law.”
According to the news agency, the media were “strictly told not to take any photographs of the potential jurors as they were whisked into the courtroom past reporters in the hallway.”
A copy of the motion obtained by Deadline reveals that Aidala also requested to remove 32 potential jurors from the trial because they were in the room when another prospective juror told the court: “I have a close friend who had an encounter with the defendant in his hotel room, and I do not think I can be a fair juror in this case.”
In another legal maneuver, Damon Cheronis, another defense attorney for Weinstein, asked to have those jurors who heard a protest going on outside disqualified, saying that “it’s this type of atmosphere that makes it impossible for Mr. Weinstein to get a fair trial,” reports the Associated Press.
“You’re probably not aware of this, but people chant and protest outside this courthouse all the time,” retorted Burke, according to the news agency.
As The Daily Wire previously reported, jury deliberations began on Tuesday for the trial of former film producer and longtime Democratic Party mega-donor Harvey Weinstein. Throughout the week, the court has been sifting through hundreds of potential New Yorkers to find jurors who can judge the case solely on the merits of the evidence presented in court.
Weinstein stands accused of forcing a woman to let him perform oral sex on her in 2006 and raping another woman, who has not been named, at a hotel in 2013. Due to a predatory sexual assault charge, Weinstein faces up to life in prison.
Donna Rotunno, a lead attorney for Weinstein, has claimed that the charges against her client “don’t rise to the level of rape.”
The disgraced film producer has also been charged with sexual assault in Los Angeles for two instances dating to 2013.
In a press conference on Monday, Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey said that prosecutors were requesting Weinstein’s bail be set at $5 million but acknowledged that he would not appear in court until his Manhattan trial had concluded. If convicted there, Weinstein faces upward of 28 years in state prison.