Weinstein Lawyers Open Door to More Witnesses—for the Prosecution
Weinstein Lawyers Open Door to More Witnesses—for the Prosecution
(Bloomberg) -- Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers opened the door to another prosecution witness who could undermine their theory that the fallen Hollywood titan, on trial for rape and predatory sexual assault, had only consensual relationships.
A former roommate of Miriam Haley testified on Tuesday that Haley confided to her in the summer of 2006 that Weinstein sexually assaulted her that July. Questioning Haley on Monday, Weinstein’s lawyers had suggested the encounters were consensual and that she invented the allegations in late 2017.
Prosecutors won the right to call the roommate, Elizabeth Entin, as a witness Tuesday to confirm that Haley told her about the alleged attack back in 2006.
“When a witness’s testimony is challenged as a recent fabrication, the witness may be rehabilitated by a prior consistent statement,” Assistant District Attorney Meghan Hast told New York State Supreme Court Justice James Burke just before court was called to order. “Certainly during cross-examination of Miriam Haleyi, the defense left the impression that Miriam had made this up, just to go public with it.”
Haley formerly went by Haleyi.
Burke allowed Entin to testify to what Haley told her in 2006, citing the “Recent Fabrication Doctrine” that permits testimony to challenge such assertions of invention.
That’s how actor Rosie Perez wound up on the stand on Friday, corroborating her friend and colleague Annabella Sciorra’s testimony Thursday that Weinstein raped her in the early 1990s. In questioning Sciorra, Weinstein’s lawyers suggested she’d recently made up her claim, “relabeling” what they argue was a consensual sexual encounter as an assault under prodding by a journalist in 2017.
Haley is one of two women Weinstein is charged with assaulting. Sciorra is one of several witnesses whose alleged assaults aren’t charged in the New York indictment but whom prosecutors won the right to call to show a pattern of “prior bad acts.”
Entin, Haley’s roommate in mid-2006, described for the jury of seven men and five women on Tuesday a series of increasingly unsettling incidents involving Weinstein and Haley, who she said finally came to her room to talk that summer.
“She seemed very nervous,” Entin told the panel. “She said she’d gone to the apartment of Harvey Weinstein, she assumed it was, you know, work-related, she came in, he had started rubbing her and kissing her, she said, ‘No, no,’ and he wouldn’t stop.”
Entin went on to describe the assault to which Haley testified Monday.
Hast asked Entin how she reacted.
“I said, ‘Miriam, that sounds like rape,’” Entin said. She said Haley wouldn’t call the police.
Entin said Haley had introduced her to Weinstein earlier that year at an event at the Cipriani restaurant in SoHo.
“Harvey Weinstein came up and shook my hand, and I was politely introduced,” Entin said. “He put his arm around Miriam, put his hand on her stomach and pulled her to him and said, ‘This is the hottest woman I know.’”
On cross-examination, defense lawyer Donna Rotunno asked Entin why she didn’t warn Haley not to continue seeing Weinstein. She asked Entin whether the two had thought it was funny that Weinstein took an interest in Haley and had once barged into their apartment while Entin was at work.
“I didn’t think that was my place, and I certainly thought an older man could certainly contain himself,” Entin said.
When the questioning returned to Hast, she asked Entin why they thought Weinstein’s pursuit of Haley was amusing.
“At the time, prior to the rape, we didn’t think it was going to go that far,” Entin responded, adding, “We saw it as a kind of pathetic older man trying really hard to hit on Miriam, so we kinda laughed it off.”
The case is People v. Weinstein, 450293/2018, New York State Supreme Court (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey
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