Harvey Weinstein trial

Most legal anylistys are saying Weinstein's attorney's blew it bigtime in their cross examination of Annabella Sciorra.
 
They've pretty much neutralized the first accuser.

There's a video of her on David Letterman saying one could not tell if she was lying and she lies often.

Her email contact with Weinstein isn't just questionable, it's pretty hard to believe she was raped even if she was.

I hope the other accuser is a better witness.


On another note, Weinstein's fake limp and act that he's frail and elderly is stupid. Hey buddy, it didn't work for Cosby.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
They've pretty much neutralized the first accuser.

There's a video of her on David Letterman saying one could not tell if she was lying and she lies often.

Her email contact with Weinstein isn't just questionable, it's pretty hard to believe she was raped even if she was.
.....
Click to expand...


Read Ronan Farrow's book. He talked with one woman after another -- including Sciorra -- who was assaulted by Weinstein, and was scared to death to tell anyone, let alone go to the cops. He held their careers and livelihoods in their hands. Some women blamed themselves, or tried to minimize what happened. Farrow himself, NBC and the New Yorker magazine were aggressively threatened by Weinstein's massive defense operation, which includes a private Israeli intelligence service. Sciorra has said she told herself for a long time that she couldn't have been raped, because "rapes are only committed by strangers in alleys." And Weinstein has never claimed that he didn't do anything, only that everything he did was consensual. That's a rapist's first defense: "I knew she really wanted it, no matter what she said ..."

I believe her. She has nothing to gain by lying, and plenty of good reasons to keep her mouth shut.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/books/review-catch-kill-ronan-farrow-harvey-weinstein.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/20/catch-and-kill-ronan-farrow-review
https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Kill-Conspiracy-Protect-Predators/dp/0316486639
 
Last edited:
Skeptic Ginger said:
They've pretty much neutralized the first accuser.

There's a video of her on David Letterman saying one could not tell if she was lying and she lies often.

Her email contact with Weinstein isn't just questionable, it's pretty hard to believe she was raped even if she was.

I hope the other accuser is a better witness.


On another note, Weinstein's fake limp and act that he's frail and elderly is stupid. Hey buddy, it didn't work for Cosby.
Click to expand...

Bob001 said:
Read Ronan Farrow's book. He talked with one woman after another -- including Sciorra -- who was assaulted by Weinstein, and was scared to death to tell anyone, let alone go to the cops. He held their careers and livelihoods in their hands. Some women blamed themselves, or tried to minimize what happened. Farrow himself, NBC and the New Yorker magazine were aggressively threatened by Weinstein's massive defense operation, which includes a private Israeli intelligence service. Sciorra has said she told herself for a long time that she couldn't have been raped, because "rapes are only committed by strangers in alleys." And Weinstein has never claimed that he didn't do anything, only that everything he did was consensual. That's a rapist's first defense: "I knew she really wanted it, no matter what she said ..."

I believe her. She has nothing to gain by lying, and plenty of good reasons to keep her mouth shut.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/11/books/review-catch-kill-ronan-farrow-harvey-weinstein.html
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/20/catch-and-kill-ronan-farrow-review
https://www.amazon.com/Catch-Kill-Conspiracy-Protect-Predators/dp/0316486639
Click to expand...

If she was Weinstein's only accuser they would have successfully neutralized her. But when taken in combination with the many Weinstein's accusers, I think their attempts to discredit Sciorra will just backfire.
 
acbytesla said:
If she was Weinstein's only accuser they would have successfully neutralized her. But when taken in combination with the many Weinstein's accusers, I think their attempts to discredit Sciorra will just backfire.
Click to expand...

That is what most legal analysts are saying.
ROsie Perez is next up.
I think the sheer number of witnesses is going to be telling.
And people are comparing Weinstein cripple act to that scene in Casino where all the mob bosses, when indicted, are faking bad health...
 
acbytesla said:
If she was Weinstein's only accuser they would have successfully neutralized her. But when taken in combination with the many Weinstein's accusers, I think their attempts to discredit Sciorra will just backfire.
Click to expand...

Come on people. Do you really think I was defending Weinstein?

I should have started with a caveat.:(
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
I have no doubt the guy is guilty as hell.

These were the two criminal charges. He deserves to go to jail. My point was that this was an unfortunate witness.
Click to expand...

It's a preview of how the defense will treat every witness: "She didn't go straight to the cops. She didn't refuse to work with him. She didn't buy a gun and shoot him. She must be lying."
 
theprestige said:
Sorry. I must have misunderstood. Did you say New Zealand's *second* biggest media outlet?
Click to expand...

The site was started as Stuff.co.nz by Independent Newspapers Ltd, but eventually got taken over by Fairfax Media, who ended up changing their name to Stuff Limited.

It's arguable if Stuff or NZME is the biggest, they are the main two, with NewsHub at #3.

Don't blame me, I didn't name any of them.....

But anyways, they have about 48% of the print and website traffic in NZ News (and #7 overall in NZ), so in answer to your first question.... about half of NZ (and apparently some Aussies and people in the US according to the analytics).
 
Last edited:
Yikes, so much emotion in this thread! My apologies for any toes I stepped on. I'll come back later.
 
I think that by the end of this trial, no juror will doubt Weinstein's guilt.
 
dudalb said:
ROsie Perez is next up.
I think the sheer number of witnesses is going to be telling.
....
Click to expand...


Perez says Sciorra told her about the rape when it happened.
At the time, Ms. Sciorra could not, or would not, name her attacker. Instead, she broke into tears and said, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” and she hung up the phone, Ms. Perez said.

But in another call a few months later, Ms. Perez added, Ms. Sciorra finally identified the man she claimed had assaulted her: It was Mr. Weinstein.

“She swore me never to tell anybody,” Ms. Perez said. “I told her to go to the police, and she said: ‘I can’t. He will destroy me. He will destroy my career.’”
Click to expand...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/...email&login=email&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

That's why women don't call the cops.
 
One perspective on Sciorra:
Victims like Sciorra, who says she repressed her pain, or who just tried to move on, or who never quite found a way to make sense of the horror — our legal system still doesn’t have a good way to think about those victims.

Does Weinstein deserve a defense? Yes, everyone does. Are some cross-examination questions reasonable? Yes, of course. Trying to pin down an exact date of the attack would be reasonable, for example, in case Weinstein could show that he was out of the country at the time.

But is it reasonable to blame a 110-pound woman in a cotton nightgown for daring to open the door to a man she knew, and then for failing to fight him off when he allegedly raped her, and for then failing to later inform her condo board?
Click to expand...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...8fd64e-3e20-11ea-baca-eb7ace0a3455_story.html
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
They've pretty much neutralized the first accuser.

There's a video of her on David Letterman saying one could not tell if she was lying and she lies often.

Her email contact with Weinstein isn't just questionable, it's pretty hard to believe she was raped even if she was.

I hope the other accuser is a better witness.


On another note, Weinstein's fake limp and act that he's frail and elderly is stupid. Hey buddy, it didn't work for Cosby.
Click to expand...

Her testimony seemed believable and she was on Letterman kidding around with Letterman? You don't say!
 
Loss Leader said:
I think that by the end of this trial, no juror will doubt Weinstein's guilt.
Click to expand...
As I know you know that might not be enough. You can think someone is guilty but recognise it wasn't beyond reasonable doubt.

I suspect that will be the way his defence will sum up, rehashing time and time again that in each individual witness and accuser there could be reasonable doubt.
 
Barbara Ziv

Here is an essay that is of expert witness Barbara Ziv, who also testified against Bill Cosby. The comment section refers to her CV, but I was not able to find it on line. "Ziv gives the excuse for why, no matter what the case, it proves guilt. And she’s quite good at it."
 
Last edited:
Chris_Halkides said:
Here is an essay that is of expert witness Barbara Ziv, who also testified against Bill Cosby. The comment section refers to her CV, but I was not able to find it on line. "Ziv gives the excuse for why, no matter what the case, it proves guilt. And she’s quite good at it."
Click to expand...


The author of your link seems to think that a majority, if not most, claims of rape are false or questionable.
This, as discussed here many times before, is not merely untrue, but outrageously false. The study upon which this was based had not only been debunked, in itself, but showed that 5.9% of allegations were provably false, notably hard given the problems with proving a negative, with the next 58.8% being inconclusive, which obviously means some or all are also false. Even the 35.3% that are deemed true may not be, as subsequent DNA testing and false confessions have revealed that the proven rape convictions turn out to be wrong sometimes.
Click to expand...

It's fair to debate the percentage of false allegations, but nobody responsibly says that it's more than half.

Note also that the writer has trouble understanding the concept of rape:
That’s dubious itself, but nonetheless, depends entirely on how one defines “rape,” whether it’s substantively non-consensual, if not forcible, or post-hoc regret.
Click to expand...

So if a woman didn't get killed or maimed fighting back, she wasn't really raped.

Are you really selling this garbage?

And Ziv's resume as a board-certified psychiatrist is on the record:
https://health.usnews.com/doctors/barbara-ziv-100861
https://www.healthgrades.com/physician/dr-barbara-ziv-3glhj
https://www.doximity.com/pub/barbara-ziv-md

Accounts of her testimony in the Weinberg trial:
https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/h...rbara-ziv-psychiatrist-bill-cosby-1203478522/
https://www.thedailybeast.com/barba...explains-rape-myths-at-harvey-weinstein-trial

What in her testimony is questionable or objectionable?
 
Last edited:
Bob001 said:
The author of your link seems to think that a majority, if not most, claims of rape are false or questionable.
This, as discussed here many times before, is not merely untrue, but outrageously false. The study upon which this was based had not only been debunked, in itself, but showed that 5.9% of allegations were provably false, notably hard given the problems with proving a negative, with the next 58.8% being inconclusive, which obviously means some or all are also false. Even the 35.3% that are deemed true may not be, as subsequent DNA testing and false confessions have revealed that the proven rape convictions turn out to be wrong sometimes.
Click to expand...

It's fair to debate the percentage of false allegations, but nobody responsibly says that it's more than half.
Click to expand...
I don't think he's quite saying that, although I agee that he's making an unwarranted assumption about what "inconclusive" means. But it seems highly likely that provably false allegations aren't the only false allegations, which is his larger point. The point being, anyone who says that the science is nailed down tightly on this question based on a single study where more than half of the cases were inconclusive is going too far.

I think when you're judging a particular case, you can't rely on statistic like that to prove anything, one way or the other. You have to look at what is the evidence in this case. I don't really know what the true percentage is, but I do know that sometimes women have recanted their accusations even after a man was convicted and sent to prison. And there were also cases where DNA subsequently proved that it wasn't the man who was convicted, but a different man.
 
Puppycow said:
......
I think when you're judging a particular case, you can't rely on statistic like that to prove anything, one way or the other. You have to look at what is the evidence in this case. I don't really know what the true percentage is, but I do know that sometimes women have recanted their accusations even after a man was convicted and sent to prison. And there were also cases where DNA subsequently proved that it wasn't the man who was convicted, but a different man.
Click to expand...

Sure. But the percentage of rapes that actually result in a police investigation, arrest and conviction is tiny, and the percentage of falsely convicted is a tinier subset. The most outrageous accounts along these lines usually involve extensive police and prosecutorial misconduct. A woman doesn't just say "I was raped," and somebody lands inb prison.

And the false convictions are usually the result of misidentification of suspects, sometimes from cops misusing photo arrays or lineups. When a victim knows her attacker, it might still be possible that she's lying, but she's not mistaking Harvey for somebody else.
 
Last edited:
Elagabalus said:
Her testimony seemed believable and she was on Letterman kidding around with Letterman? You don't say!
Click to expand...

I'm trying to be realistic about what the jury will believe.

To clarify once again, I'm not saying I don't believe the accusers.
 
Last edited:
a problem with a commonly quoted statistic

Bob001 said:
The author of your link seems to think that a majority, if not most, claims of rape are false or questionable.
Click to expand...
No, I believe that you have misunderstood his main point with respect to this statistic. If x% of allegations are proven false to a high degree of certainty, it does not follow that 100-x% are true to a high level of certainty.
 
For a few years I worked for a local rape-sexual-assault center. I have not read the transcript of the accuser's testimony, but will. From what I have picked up on so far is that they - the accusers - are really being heard. I hope so. Also, I picked up that no one is buying in to Weinstein's pathetic attempt to manipulate sympathy by altering his appearance.

It backfired Harv, you are simply an embarrassment to yourself, as well as being a horrific rapist.
 
caveat: I haven't looked into this case in any depth, so won't be commenting on the specifics.

First, I just wanted to add that "more alleged victims = guilty" isn't a good metric, but I can see how it would convince a jury (I can also see how poor witnesses may convince the jury the other way). I have the Daniel Holtzclaw case in mind, especially.

Regarding rape statistics, I've found a few intriguing articles on the below website. I'll link two of them. That said, each case of course stands on their own merits, and I don't think getting into the weeds on the exact stats really matters unless one is having a larger discussion. Usually, I find people are trying to minimize or maximize doubt about guilt about a particular case by referring to the statistics, and I don't think that really makes sense.

http://www.datagoneodd.com/blog/2015/06/28/what-do-we-know-about-false-rape-allegations/

http://www.datagoneodd.com/blog/2015/01/25/how-to-lie-and-mislead-with-rape-statistics-part-1/

I'll grab a quote which will be controversial to prompt those who are curious to read it:

The “unfounded” rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime. In 1995, 8 percent of forcible rape complaints were “unfounded,” while the average for all Index crimes was 2 percent.
Click to expand...
 
Chris_Halkides said:
No, I believe that you have misunderstood his main point with respect to this statistic. If x% of allegations are proven false to a high degree of certainty, it does not follow that 100-x% are true to a high level of certainty.
Click to expand...

But the two sides don't carry equal weight. Our entire legal system, starting with the cop who takes the first report and continuing all the way through witness cross-examination at trial, is designed to identify and exclude false claims. If a claim is not proven false, that alone is strong evidence that it is true. This isn't "on the one hand, on the other hand," "maybe, maybe not," "who can really know?".

It should be self-evident that many women don't even report sexual assault to the authorities because they fear the lengthy, grueling legal processes that will follow, starting with cops not even believing them. It's perplexing to me that it's so many people work so hard to minimize and trivialize rape.
 
Last edited:
theprestige said:
What's the difference between "majority" and "most"?


Does your concept of rape include consensual sex that one regrets later?
Click to expand...

1/ I hope you never work for a pollster. A "majority" is at least 51%; "most" would be a higher percentage. How much higher is subjective, depending on the issue and circumstances.

2/ Ah, "regret sex." The go-to defense of the rapist: "Bitches don't know what they want!" If a woman is too drunk or drugged to give consent, that's rape. If a woman gives in to a horny drunken jock because she's afraid of the consequences if she doesn't, that's rape. This isn't complicated.
 
Bob001 said:
1/ I hope you never work for a pollster. A "majority" is at least 51%; "most" would be a higher percentage. How much higher is subjective, depending on the issue and circumstances.
Click to expand...
That doesn't seem very helpful. Can you give an example of how a pollster uses "most" to convey useful information?
 
theprestige said:
That doesn't seem very helpful. Can you give an example of how a pollster uses "most" to convey useful information?
Click to expand...
An honest pollster would describe 51% as being 'about half', or 'half' since it is probably within the margin of error. Here's an example:-

CNN poll: 51% say Senate should remove Trump from office
About half of Americans say the Senate should vote to convict President Donald Trump and remove him from office in the upcoming impeachment trial (51%), according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS
Click to expand...

Words like 'most' are ambiguous and so should generally be avoided. At a minimum it should refer to a clear majority. ie. significantly above the margin of error. A dishonest reporter might try to imply a larger proportion by just saying 'most' and not providing the actual numbers, but we wouldn't be fooled by that, right?

theprestige said:
Who gives a **** about the Stuff headline? Who even reads Stuff?
Click to expand...
Yikes! That mask is really slipping...
 
Darat said:
As I know you know that might not be enough. You can think someone is guilty but recognise it wasn't beyond reasonable doubt.

I suspect that will be the way his defence will sum up, rehashing time and time again that in each individual witness and accuser there could be reasonable doubt.
Click to expand...


I'm sure that will be the defense's argument. But I don't think they'll be successful. The patterns of behavior that will emerge from all of the victims - of the charged crimes and of older ones - will be damning. And, of course, they can't put Weinstein himself on the stand because he's a raging egomaniac who couldn't withstand cross-examination.

It's possible Weinstein will win. I doubt it, though.


Bob001 said:
It should be self-evident that many women don't even report sexual assault to the authorities because they fear the lengthy, grueling legal processes that will follow, starting with cops not even believing them. It's perplexing to me that it's so many people work so hard to minimize and trivialize rape.
Click to expand...


In New York City, police have been known to intentionally lead a woman to downplay sexual assault until it's some level of misdemeanor or withdrawn completely. Comstat, the controversial statistics engine and accountability meetings, becomes very upset when felonies in a precinct rise. It doesn't matter why they're rising - #metoo or better evidence gathering. It just matters that they are, and those precincts are targeted by the Commissioner as problem areas.

Periodically, the NYPD asserts that they've made major changes to the system to address this flaw (and its inherent racism). They haven't, though - at least not in any particularly meaningful way.
 
Today's testimony:
“He held me down on the bed and he forced himself on me orally,” she told a jury, blotting her eyes with tissues as she tried to compose herself. “I was on my period. I had a tampon in there. I was mortified.”

Weinstein, she said, ignored her repeated protests, as he overpowered her — he weighed around 300 pounds and she was 5-foot-5 and around 115 pounds, according to her testimony.
Click to expand...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...fc4176-411c-11ea-aa6a-083d01b3ed18_story.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom