Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
An attorney for Harvey Weinstein at his Los Angeles rape and sexual assault trial told jurors Thursday that prosecutors' case relies entirely on asking them to trust women whose testimony showed they were untrustworthy.
"Take my word for it," Jackson told jurors in his closing argument. "Five words that sum up the entirety of the prosecution's case."
Everything else prosecutors presented, through a month's of testimony from 44 witnesses, "was smoke and mirrors," Jackson said.
Weinstein is charged with raping and sexually assaulting two women and committing sexual battery against two others.
Jackson urged jurors to look past the drama and emotion of the testimony those four women gave, and focus on the factual evidence.
"Believe us because we're mad, believe us because we cried," Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. "Well fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth."
Jackson said the stories of two women who Weinstein allegedly sexually assaulted on back-to-back days in 2013 "simply never happened."
Weinstein's alleged rape and assault of the other two women in 2005 and 2010 were "100% consensual" encounters that the women engaged in for the sake of career advancement that they later became "desperate to relabel" as non-consensual, Jackson said.
"These were women with whom Harvey had transactional relationships and transactional sex," he said.
Jackson argued that the women were perfectly willing to exchange sex for favors or status when the incidents happened in 2005 and 2010. But after the #MeToo explosion around Weinstein with stories in the New York Times and the New Yorker in 2017, they were regretful.
"They played the game. They hate it now, unequivocally," Jackson said. "But what about then? What about before the 2017 dogpile started on Mr. Weinstein?"
He dwelled on a judge's instruction he said was essential, that if jurors found that any significant thing a witness said was untrue, they should consider disbelieving everything the witness said.
The defence is set to finish its closing argument in the afternoon, and after the prosecutor's rebuttal, jurors will begin deliberations.
Weinstein is already serving a 23-year sentence for a conviction in New York.
Prosecutors completed their closing argument earlier Thursday after giving most of it Wednesday, and urged jurors to complete Weinstein's takedown by convicting him in California.
"It is time for the defendant's reign of terror to end," Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said. "It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice."
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to one of three men convicted in the brutal murders of three McDonald's restaurant workers in Cape Breton more than 30 years ago.
Rainfall warnings of up to 90 millimetres and other alerts have been issued for six Canadian provinces, according to the latest forecasts.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
A bus carrying worshippers headed to an Easter festival plunged off a bridge on a mountain pass and burst into flames in South Africa on Thursday, killing at least 45 people, authorities said.
Calgary police have shut down a number of bridges into and out of the downtown core as officers deal with a distraught individual.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.