Mel Gibson can testify in the Harvey Weinstein trial

This Monday, October 17, a retrial of Harvey Weinstein begins in Los Angeles, five years after the explosion of #MeToo. A court will try the producer on 11 charges of rape and sexual abuse and faces 140 years in prison in a trial that is estimated to last about two months. Among the possible witnesses, Judge Lisa B. Lench ruled that Mel Gibson would be eligible to be called by the prosecution and, if so, placed a number of limitations on the defense so that her testimony is not tainted.

As reported by Variety, Gibson allegedly acted as a witness for Jane Doe 3, who accuses Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2010 in a hotel after she gave him a massage. According to Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez, the woman (who prefers to keep her name anonymous, hence Jane Doe) told Gibson about the incident during a massage for the actor, and Gibson’s testimony would help support your story.

Neither racist nor anti-Semitic …

Mark Werksman, Weinstein’s attorney, held in the previous hearing that the “Braveheart” protagonist could not take a stand, arguing that the producer and the actor had been having a complicated relationship for years that includes some kind of controversy over “La Christ’s passion”. ‘. Werksman argued that Gibson, in addition to harboring a personal grudge against Weinstein which had nothing to do with the rape allegations, has its own controversies related to both #MeToo and hate crimes and that he wanted to clean up his image by siding with the victim.

It turns out Weinstein is Jewish, or at least he was born into a Jewish family, and his attorney has argued that Gibson is a man who “He is not willing to give the same status to someone who is not of his class because he has a white supremacist view. Someone with white supremacist values ​​may have no problem committing perjury against a Jewish defendant. “ The judge eventually ruled that Gibson could be part of the trial and that the defense could ask him if he holds a grudge against Weinstein, but he could not make any allusion to the racist and anti-Semitic comments the interpreter has poured out over the years. Harvey Weinstein, who continues to plead not guilty, has already been sentenced to 23 years in prison guilty of a first-degree criminal sexual assault count and a third-degree rape count, a verdict he intends to appeal. However, between the time the appeal arrives and if new sentences are added to this trial, even if he does not receive a life sentence, it will be difficult for him to go back to being a free man.