Guilty pleasures
By NewsPress Now
Weinstein’s retrial moved to next year, lawyer plans to hire a private investigator
NEW YORK | Harvey Weinstein’s retrial on sex crimes charges in Manhattan won’t start until at least next year — and his lawyers plan to hire a private investigator to look into a new allegation against the movie mogul that will now be part of the case.
The new details came as Weinstein appeared in court Wednesday for a pretrial hearing.
Weinstein was already facing retrial on two sex crimes charges after the state’s highest court overturned his 2020 conviction earlier this year. In September, he was hit with a new charge accusing him of another assault. He has pleaded not guilty.
On Wednesday, Judge Curtis Farber granted a prosecution request to consolidate both cases and agreed to push back the trial’s start date, which had been tentatively scheduled for Nov. 12.
Weinstein’s lawyers sought a date in March or April. Prosecutors said they were not opposed, but were prepared to go to trial as soon as January. Farber set the next pre-trial hearing for Jan. 29.
“We’re going to need some time to investigate the case, hire a private investigator and dig more into discovery,” said Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala.
Weinstein, seated in a wheelchair, held a copy of former President Barack Obama’s memoir “A Promised Land” as he listened intently to the proceedings.
Weinstein was convicted on charges that he forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006, and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013. In the new charge, prosecutors say he forced oral sex on a different woman in a Manhattan hotel in the spring of 2006.
After the hearing, Aidala said he was “somewhat disappointed” but not surprised by the judge’s decision to consolidate the cases.
“It’s right out of their playbook from the last time,” he said, referring to prosecutors. “They’re going to put his personality and his demeanor on trial as opposed to the facts of the case on trial.”
Weinstein’s lawyers had argued in court papers that the cases should remain separate, accusing prosecutors of attempting to transform the retrial into “an entirely new proceeding.”
But Farber sided with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which had contended that holding a separate trial on the new charge would be “extraordinarily inefficient” and waste judicial resources.
In a written decision, Farber said lawyers for Weinstein had “failed to establish that his right to a fair trial free of undue prejudice would be violated” if the two cases were merged.
Aidala said the new accuser hasn’t yet been officially identified to defense lawyers.
“It’s much of the same where for years, decades, it’s been consensual, and then as of late, it’s not consensual,” he said.
A lawyer for the accuser, who she said wants to be identified as “Jane Doe” for now, said her client maintains her encounter with Weinstein was not consensual.
“While Ms. Doe has previously chosen not to publicly share this painful portion of her experience, she has always remained consistent in her conversations with the Manhattan DA’s office,” attorney Lindsay Goldbrum said in a statement. “Ms. Doe wants her privacy to be respected while she prepares for her testimony.”
Aidala also pushed back on suggestions that Weinstein’s case echoes the federal sex trafficking case against rap mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, which includes allegations he coerced and abused women for years and silenced them through blackmail, threats and violence.
“There’s no allegations of force, like physical force. There’s no allegations of drugs and filming and baby oil and all that stuff,” he said. “This is all about people who knew each other, who went on dates, who fooled around. Everything was fine for years and years and years and now it’s not fine anymore.”
Weinstein’s first trial included testimony from women who described being forcibly groped, physically cornered and shoved into objects by Weinstein, and kicking and punching him as they tried to wrestle out of his grip.
He was acquitted at that trial of predatory sexual assault charges related to accusations by actress Annabella Sciorra, who had described a violent attack in her apartment in the 1990s. Prosecutors are barred from retrying him on those allegations.
Aidala wouldn’t elaborate on reports that Weinstein is dealing with a new health issue while behind bars.
“I’m not going to get into any specifics except to say that Mr. Weinstein is a fighter and he’s here to fight this case and he’s going to fight with every ounce of strength in his body any health issues that he has,” he said.
The 72-year-old former film producer has faced numerous health complications, including emergency heart surgery to remove fluid on his heart and lungs last month.
Weinstein’s lawyers have argued — so far unsuccessfully — that he should be housed at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital rather than the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
Sexual assault and harassment allegations against Weinstein turbocharged the #MeToo movement in 2017.
The co-founder of the film and television production companies Miramax and The Weinstein Company was also convicted of rape in Los Angeles in 2022, though his lawyers have appealed.
Lana Del Rey did marry alligator swamp tour guide Jeremy Dufrene
NEW YORK | It is official. Lana Del Rey and alligator swamp tour guide Jeremy Dufrene did marry in Louisiana last month.
After a few weeks of speculation about the status of their relationship, Del Rey and Dufrene’s marriage license was signed and returned to the Lafourche Parish Clerk of Court, where it was filed on Friday.
The document, obtained by The Associated Press, lists Los Angeles pastor Judah Smith, who has been Justin Bieber’s pastor, as the officiant. The fifth track on Del Rey’s 2023 album, “Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” is titled “Judah Smith Interlude,” on which Smith is a credited co-writer.
TMZ initially reported on Sept. 26 that the singer, born Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, and Dufrene had obtained a marriage license. The Associated Press confirmed a license had been obtained from the Lafourche Parish Clerk of Court on Sept. 23, but it was not immediately returned and processed.
In the state of Louisiana, marriage licenses are meant to be returned by the officiant to the issuing office within 10 days of the ceremony, but exceptions are made, the clerk’s office said. The license was due to expire on Wednesday.
On Sept. 26, at 3:33 p.m., the license says, Del Rey, 39, and Dufrene, 49, tied the knot in Des Allemands, Louisiana, in the bayou where he works as a captain at Airboat Tours by Arthur. The license lists a home in Des Allemands, an unincorporated community in St. Charles Parish, as the residence for both Del Rey and Dufrene.
It is unclear when the couple started dating, but there are photos of the pair together dating back to 2019, when Del Rey took one of Dufrene’s tours.
The 11-time Grammy nominated artist has long been celebrated for her nostalgic, romantic pop, which often references images of vintage Americana. She’s released nine studio albums and is perhaps best known for her Top 10 hit, “Summertime Sadness” from her multiplatinum 2012 album, “Born to Die.”
Representatives for Del Rey did not confirm the marriage when reached for comment last month and did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
Local news sources are still drying up, but there’s growth
in digital sites
Newspapers in the United States closed at the rate of more than two per week during 2023, but a burst of activity among digital entrepreneurs illustrated some tiny shoots of growth in what has become a desert-like climate for local news.
A total of 127 newspapers closed last year, while the 81 digital sites gained was the most in any year since the Medill Local News Initiative at Northwestern University began measuring that activity in 2018, and possibly the most ever.
“It shows that there are some entrepreneurs and innovators out there,” said Tim Franklin, director of the Medill Local News Initiative.
One caution: digital news is still an area with a lot of churn. There were actually 212 new sites that started last year, including 30 that were former newspapers that converted to digital only, while 131 closed, making for the net gain of 81.
The big picture for local news remains tough
The big picture also remains ominous, as few of the factors that have led to the decimation of the local news industry have really changed. Advertisers and readers are still slipping away. More than 3,200 newspapers have closed since 2005, leaving roughly 5,600 remaining, Medill said. Nearly 2,000 newsroom jobs were lost in the last year alone.
“The local news crisis is snowballing,” Franklin said. “We see it in the expansion of news deserts, the unrelenting pace of closures and the loss of newspaper jobs.”
The list includes the Hinton Times in northwest Iowa, which closed after 28 years when its owners retired; the Northland Press outside of Brainerd, Minnesota, which ended after the death of its publisher; and the Tioga Tribune in North Dakota, whose editor left town.
Of the new digital sites, some 90 percent are located in metropolitan areas, servicing communities that had been seeing less coverage because of job losses at larger news outlets. In the Chicago area where Northwestern is located, Block Club Chicago offers hyper-local coverage to nearly two dozen neighborhoods, The TRiiBE is geared to young, professional Black residents and the Cicero Independiente reaches Latino consumers.
Still a need for news in rural areas
While that’s good news for those communities, there’s still an urgent need for news in rural areas, the report said. Using a metric that takes into account poverty and areas with only one news outlet, Medill placed 279 counties on its “watch list” of those at risk of losing local news altogether. That’s up 22 percent from the previous year.
Medill also noticed an increased pace in newspapers changing ownership — 258 in 2023 compared to 180 the year before. A number of smaller companies are more active in acquiring papers, as opposed to a large chain like Gannett, leading to growth in companies like the Carpenter Media Group in Farmville, Virginia.
More of the digital start-ups that have opened in the past few years are nonprofit instead of profit businesses, said Zach Metzger, director of the Medill State of Local News Project. That eliminates the expense of printing and distributing newspapers, while offering greater flexibility in funding sources, he said.
—From AP reports
