Miriam Haley, a former television production assistant, on Tuesday afternoon took the stand in a Manhattan courtroom for a second time to begin recounting how she said Harvey Weinstein overpowered and sexually assaulted her in his apartment nearly 20 years ago.
Ms. Haley said she initially met Mr. Weinstein, then a powerful Hollywood producer, at a film premiere in London in 2004. She has said she reconnected with him years later as she was looking for an opportunity as a production assistant in New York.
Defense lawyers carefully listened on Tuesday as Ms. Haley spoke, a transcript of what she said during Mr. Weinstein’s first trial five years ago on hand, waiting to pounce on any differences in her retelling.
Ms. Haley’s testimony was one of the most highly anticipated and closely watched moments of Mr. Weinstein’s retrial, which began this month.
In 2020, Mr. Weinstein was convicted in New York of rape and a criminal sexual act based on the complaints of two women, one of them Ms. Haley. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison, but his conviction was overturned last year and a new trial was ordered. In the interim, prosecutors added a new indictment.
On Tuesday, Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, watched as Ms. Haley testified. She was not the first witness to testify for a second time. Ms. Haley’s former roommate told jurors last week about how a “very shaken and distraught and frightened” Ms. Haley hovered around her bedroom door while telling her that Mr. Weinstein had “forcibly put his mouth on her vagina without her consent.”
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