A jury of seven men and five women was selected Friday for Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial after an arduous two-week process, setting the stage for testimony to begin in the next week. The final tally mostly erased a gender imbalance that, just hours earlier, led to complaints by prosecutors that the defense was deliberately trying to keep young women off the panel. The defense said it wasn’t specifically targeting young women, but didn’t want jurors who were too young to understand the way men and women interacted in the early 1990s. In the end, the jury includes the author of an upcoming novel that she describes as involving young women dealing with predatory older men. The defense, out of challenges, argued against including her on the jury, but Burke said she could serve.

Source: Los Angeles Times January 17, 2020 19:04 UTC