Professor Cheryl Bader was quoted in an article for Bloomberg examining Harvey Weinstein’s upcoming trial and how jury selection is likely to occur.
Opening arguments in Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial are more than a week off, but his lawyers are fighting for his freedom now, and the jury they select is the key to it. The defense may want older women skeptical of a female victim in a sexual encounter, as prosecutors likely seek younger women and men raised to believe no means no.
“The defense will be looking for jurors who will be receptive to the argument that, while Harvey Weinstein is no angel, and he may have flexed his power in Hollywood to ‘entice’ women, the sexual encounters were consensual and did not cross the line into the realm of criminal conduct,” said Cheryl Bader, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal defense at Fordham Law School.
Lawyers for Weinstein, who is also charged with predatory sexual assault, “will seek to capitalize on an unfortunate but well-entrenched myth that if a woman was truly unwilling to engage in sex, she would have found some way to extricate herself from the situation,” Bader predicted. “Even women fall prey to this myth, thinking ‘I would never let this happen to me.’ ”