The Weinstein Trial and the Lies of Due Process

On yesterday morning’s episode of The New York Times’s podcast The Daily, the reporter Megan Twohey interviewed Donna Rotunno, one of the lead attorneys on Harvey Weinstein’s defense team. Rotunno made an argument both striking and old: The real problem with the way Americans treat sexual-misconduct claims is that they give accusers too much power.

“There is absolutely no risk for a woman to come forward now and make a claim. Zero,” Rotunno said. (Those who make public allegations of sexual assault are in fact commonly doubted, mocked, blamed, fired, and otherwise punished for making such claims.) And: “I’m just cautioning people to be a little bit more skeptical about a one-sided version of events.” (Twohey and her colleague Jodi Kantor in their book, , that Weinstein was given ample and .) The system is biased, Rotunno suggested, toward accusers. (Out of every 1,000 sexual assaults, , 995 assailants will walk free.) “If 500 positives come from #MeToo,” Rotunno told Twohey, and “if, as part of that, that strips your right to due process—if we’re going to convict people before they have a trial—I find that to be damaging and detrimental.”