Harvey Weinstein jury wrestles with evidence of his contact with accusers

The jury at Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial in New York is wrestling with one of the most fiercely contested aspects of the case – the contact the disgraced movie mogul maintained with his accusers even after he allegedly sexually assaulted them.

As the jury entered the second day of their deliberations at the New York supreme court in Manhattan on Wednesday, the five women and seven men sent a note to the judge asking to see key evidence relating to Miriam Haley, a former Project Runway assistant producer. They want to be reread Haley’s testimony relating to when she was allegedly sexually assaulted by Weinstein in July 2006 as well as a second encounter in which she had sex with him in a Beverly Hills hotel about two weeks later.

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The jurors also asked to see all emails between Weinstein and Haley, and between Weinstein and any third party relating to Haley.

The requests appear to go to the heart of the most fraught element of the Weinstein prosecution in which he faces possible life imprisonment on five counts of rape, forced oral sex and predatory sexual assault. In an exceptionally rare move, the New York district attorney’s office decided to press ahead to trial with two main accusers – one of whom is Haley – who kept in touch with their alleged attacker even after they claim they were sexually assaulted by him.

That aspect of the case has been heavily emphasized by Weinstein’s defense lawyers. In cross-examination, Haley admitted she had accepted plane tickets to Los Angeles and London paid for by Weinstein shortly after the alleged sex attack, and that she kept in touch with him professionally via email.

“You wanted a connection with Mr Weinstein to help your career,” Damon Cheronis, a lawyer on the defense team, asked her on the witness stand.

In her testimony, Haley said that she had been lured to Weinstein’s apartment on 10 July 2006. There he turned on her, pushed her on to his bed and forced her to have oral sex.

When she protested that she was on her period, he allegedly yanked out her tampon and carried on. “I was just crying, ‘No.’ I kept trying to tell him, ‘No, don’t go there.’ I was in such shock that I just checked out,” she told the court.

The jury has asked to have that part of her testimony reread to them. They also want to hear again the section of the court transcript in which she described agreeing to meet Weinstein again just two weeks later on 26 July 2006 in the Tribeca Grand hotel in Beverly Hills.

Asked why she would have accepted an invitation to meet her alleged attacker so soon after a violent and degrading experience, she said: “I feel like I was trying to regain some sort of power or something.”

In tune with their general strategy, Weinstein’s lawyers have made much of the second sexual encounter, which is not included in the charges. In cross-examination and in closing arguments they have argued it proves that Haley was in a consensual sexual relationship with the defendant and that she lied about him forcing oral sex on to her in the earlier incident.

In fact, Haley’s testimony about the Tribeca Grand incident is far more ambiguous than that. “I just laid there. He had intercourse with me. I was laying there motionless, I felt like an idiot and I felt numb,” she said.

Her testimony described a sexual event that was not so much consensual but one in which she failed to resist. Asked whether Weinstein had forced himself on her at the Tribeca Grand, she replied: “I didn’t physically resist but I felt that, yeah.”

The jury is now grappling with what to make of all these interactions. The eventual interpretation they reach could have immense consequences, resulting in a possible acquittal on a couple of the five counts facing Weinstein or alternatively conviction of a criminal sex act that carries a minimum sentence of five years in prison.

By Wednesday afternoon the jury appeared to have moved on from Haley to consider the evidence relating to Sciorra. They sent a fresh request to the judge asking to reread the testimony of the actor Rosie Perez who said she had been told by her friend Sciorra that she had been raped.

The jury also wanted to see all emails and digital communication between Weinstein and his friend Paul Feldsher, who was called by the defense to give evidence. Feldsher testified that Sciorra had told him she had done a “crazy thing with Harvey” – implying that their sexual encounter was consensual and not rape.

But Feldsher’s testimony backfired on Weinstein when the witness was forced under cross-examination to admit that he had called the defendant a “sex addict”.

As an additional request, the jury asked to see all emails between Weinstein and Black Cube, the detective firm of former Israeli intelligence agents employed by the defendant to investigate Sciorra before she went public with her allegations.