After two weeks of jury selection, seven men and five women have been chosen to decide the fate of disgraced filmmaker Harvey Weinstein in his trial.
Opening statements in the trial are set to begin Wednesday in New York’s Supreme Court, according to the Associated Press. Weinstein is charged with rape and sexual assault.
In addition to the seven selected jurors, there are three alternates — one man and two women — who will take the place of any juror who cannot make it through the trial.
“We got the best jury we could get under the circumstances,” said defense attorney Donna Rotunno on Friday. One of the jurors is an author who is writing a book about older men preying on young women, a fact that upset the defense team, who demanded a mistrial over the selection, although that request was thrown out by Judge James Burke.
“I’m obviously not happy with what happened in the end, there. I think that was an absolutely ridiculous decision,” Rotunno said of Burke’s decision.
The defense team was pushing for an older jury pool and claimed it wasn’t purposely trying to exclude young women, but Arthur Aidala, another Weinstein attorney, emphasized that men and women interacted differently in the 1990s than today.
“That was a different time in New York and on planet Earth,” Aidala said.
Weinstein declined to comment on the jury selection as he left the courthouse on Friday, pushing a walker. The 67-year-old filmmaker recently underwent back surgery.
The selection process featured hundreds of potential jurors, including 24-year-old supermodel Gigi Hadid, who was dismissed this week. Hadid maintained that although she has met Weinstein, she would have been able to “keep an open mind” if selected.
Another potential juror is expected back in court and could face a month in jail after Burke said he broke the court rules by discussing the trial over social media during the selection process.
More than 600 people were called as potential jurors, and many of them were immediately dismissed because they said they wouldn’t have been able to be impartial during the high-profile trial. Others were disqualified because they said they knew Weinstein’s accusers or had experienced sexual abuse themselves.
“This trial is not a referendum on the #MeToo movement,” Burke told potential jurors during selection.
Weinstein, who denies all wrongdoing, faces life in prison if convicted. He also faces additional sex charges in California.
