Harvey Weinstein. Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

The chances that Hollywood movie producer Harvey Weinstein's defense team can find a full complement of jurors unfamiliar with the allegations against him are vanishingly small, several New York lawyers agreed in the days before jury selection begins in Weinstein's Manhattan criminal trial.

Judge James Burke of the New York City Criminal Court is set to hear pretrial motions Monday, and jury selection is expected to begin Tuesday and take about two weeks. The trial is likely to last into March.

All potential jurors will be asked to describe what they've heard about Weinstein, whose interactions with women over decades in the movie business were the subject of major investigations by the New Yorker and the New York Times in 2017.

They're also likely to be asked about their personal experiences with sexual assault—Weinstein is charged with rape, predatory sexual assault and criminal sexual act—and sexual harassment. Weinstein, 67, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

Dozens of women, including a number of celebrities, have accused Weinstein of misconduct across several decades, and the flood of accusations against him has been credited with accelerating the #MeToo movement and changing the conversation about appropriate treatment of women in the workplace.

Weinstein's lawyers, the Chicago attorneys Damon Cheronis and Donna Rotunno and the New York firm Aidala Bertuna & Kamins, have said they hope jurors can separate media coverage of Weinstein from Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s charges against him, which involve a few specific incidents.

The New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, First Department denied Weinstein's motion to change venue for the trial in the fall. Prosecutors had argued that jurors across the state all had plenty of access to news about Weinstein, so moving the case out of Manhattan would make little difference.

Mark Bederow, who worked as a Manhattan assistant district attorney before moving into private criminal defense, said jury selection could make or break the case for Weinstein's team.

"If they can get a group of jurors who are willing to put aside whatever they've heard prior to it, put aside whatever feelings they have about how gross Weinstein is or distasteful and recognize that it comes down to whether the prosecution proves (its case) beyond a reasonable doubt … if that's the jury he gets, I think he's in the game, but it's going to be tough," Bederow said.

The Weinstein team is expected to attempt to prove that the women continued to interact with Weinstein after the alleged offenses, in the hopes that subsequent positive interactions will make it hard for jurors to believe the women's accounts.

But three more Weinstein accusers are expected to take the witness stand to testify about his "prior bad acts," even though he's not charged with criminal offenses against them.

That testimony could be "substantially problematic" for Weinstein, Bederow said.

"You saw that in the (Bill) Cosby case— that's the obvious comparison, I think, where that seemed to have a serious impact on the result of that case," Bederow said.

Bill Cosby's first trial on sexual assault charges, in 2017, ended with a hung jury. But a Pennsylvania judge allowed five additional accusers to testify as prior bad acts witnesses at his retrial, and he was convicted of three counts of sexual assault in 2018.

Employment lawyer Doug Wigdor, who represents one of the three witnesses expected to testify against Weinstein, said his client wanted to help with the prosecution against Weinstein however she could.

"She's not in this at all for the money, because there is no money," Wigdor said. "She's in it solely for the purpose of holding him accountable for his actions."

Joan Illuzzi-Orbon, a veteran prosecutor known for prosecuting the missing-child homicide case of Etan Patz, is leading the case for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, which declined to comment Friday.

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