'He's in our hearts': Family and friends still seek answers one year after Nathan Wise’s disappearance
It’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
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’s been a year since Nathan Wise went missing and his family is no closer to finding out what happened to him.
Dozens of Ontarians are expressing frustration in the province’s health-care system after their family doctors either dropped them as patients or threatened to after they sought urgent care elsewhere.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
Amazon's paid subscription service provides free delivery for online shopping across Canada except for remote locations, the company said in an email. While customers in Iqaluit qualify for the offer, all other communities in Nunavut are excluded.
The fire burning near Fort McMurray grew from 25 hectares to 5,500 hectares over the weekend.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin began a Cabinet shakeup on Sunday, proposing the replacement of Sergei Shoigu as defence minister as he begins his fifth term in office.
Police are searching for a male suspect after a man was “slashed in neck” on Sunday morning in downtown Toronto and died.
There were some scary moments for several people on a northern Ontario highway caught on video Thursday after a chain reaction following a truck fire.
Health Canada announced various product recalls this week, including electric adapters, armchairs, cannabis edibles and vehicle components.
English, history, entertainment, math and geography: high school trivia teams could be quizzed on any of it when they compete at the Reach for the Top Nationals in Ottawa in June.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.
A small Ajax dessert shop that recently received a glowing review from celebrity food critic Keith Lee is being forced to move after a zoning complaint was made following the social media influencer’s visit last month.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is inviting visitors to explore their poop. A new exhibition opens at the Ottawa museum on Friday called, 'Oh Crap! Rethinking human waste.'
The Regina Police Service says it is the first in Saskatchewan and possibly Canada to implement new technology in its detention facility that will offer real-time monitoring of detainees’ vital health metrics.
Just as she had feared, a restaurant owner from eastern Quebec who visited Montreal had her SUV stolen, but says it was all thanks to the kindness of strangers on the internet — not the police — that she got it back.