This week she will make her first big appearance, in the process that is now securing her worldwide attention. Donna Rotunno, 44, is the defender of the former film producer Harvey Weinstein. and the opening pleadings are now pending in Hall 99 of the New York State Supreme Court.
She probably knows what she was getting into, and has represented suspected sex offenders 40 times in her career. Not all cases actually went to court like their current and most prominent mandate.
Weinstein is their first big fish
So far, the Chicago lawyer has lost only one of the cases that have been heard. In 2010, her then client, a high school football player, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for raping a classmate. For Rotunno, this was a “far too harsh” punishment – even years later she still argues that her client was just a fellow traveler. To date, a court drawing of that case hangs in Rotunno’s office.
Video: Donna Rotunno interviewed by CNN
The 44-year-old has been defending men who have been accused of sexual assault for 15 years. When asked why, Rotunno routinely answers in interviews with a reference to a legal principle: the right to a fair trial.
However, critics do not relieve her of this – for her Rotunno is a career-conscious «anti-gloria allred». Allred became famous in America in the mid-1990s when she represented the family of Simpson’s murdered wife in the sensational murder trial of football player O. J. Simpson. The women’s rights activist is also active in the Weinstein trial – as a lawyer for Annabella Sciorra, a suspected victim of Weinstein, who will testify in the trial. For Rotunno the role of the antihero remains once again. An attribution in which she obviously feels comfortable.
In an interview with “Chicago Magazine”, she admitted that the #MeToo movement is good for business. Rotunno defended local greats in Chicago: a fashion designer, an imam, a lawyer – Harvey Weinstein is the first really prominent client for the defense lawyer and her partner Damon Cheronis. The Weinstein trial is a high point in the career of the tall lawyer with long, brown hair.
In a CNN interview shortly before the trial started, she said the defense would aim to ensure that all sexual contacts were consensual. More than 80 women have accused Harvey Weinstein of serious sexual misconduct since the first allegations were made known. The New York court will deal with the experiences of two women, four other suspected victims are to be heard as witnesses.
“And people took advantage of him, over and over again.”
The prosecutor wants to prove that the accused always pressured his victims in the same way. Rotunno also sees a behavior pattern – however, among those women who accuse their clients. “Harvey Weinstein was the guy who held the keys to the lock everyone wanted to go into,” she told the Vanity Fair, alluding to Weinstein’s status as “King of Hollywood”. “And people took advantage of him, over and over again.”
Rotunno gave interviews to two US media before the trial started two and a half weeks ago – it is an attempt to influence public opinion about the “Monster Harvey”. In the process itself, Rotunno will now try to raise doubts about the guilt of her client in the jury. According to her previous statements, she will try to portray Harvey Weinstein as the victim of his own fame and a completely unleashed women’s rights movement.
In doing so, she will probably also throw her gender into the balance. Weinstein recently explicitly wished for a woman to head his legal counsel, having previously worn out two purely male defense teams. A former client says about Rotunno that she is not only a “bulldog in the courtroom”, but also knows that a defendant needs emotional support.
It represents the “King of Hollywood”: Rotunno with tartar.
The defense lawyer with the Italian roots should show little understanding for the women on the witness stand – in cross-examination she is considered relentless. She herself admits that she has advantages over a male colleague here: “He may be an excellent lawyer, but if he hits the woman as hard as I do, he will look like a bully,” she told Chicago Magazine. According to its own statement, Rotunno pays attention to a balanced mix of strength and femininity in her court outfits, often wearing designer dresses and skirts.
Little is known about her private life; she has 14 godchildren, she told the magazine “Vanity Fair”, and also often think of a sentence from her father: “Your feelings should never cloud your intellect.”
With all tactical preferences, the 44-year-old has a reputation for meticulous preparation. She decided the lawsuit against the fashion designer in Chicago with one question. In a surveillance video, she had noticed that the alleged rape victim was wearing the pajamas he was wearing during the attack when he later met his alleged torturer. Rotunno confronted the woman in court: “Of all the clothes you have in your closet, do you decide to meet your” rapist “for the pajama pants in which you were raped?” A single look at the faces of female jury members then sufficed, according to Rotunno: “I knew it was over.”
The men who hire her are not always the victims of false accusations, the Weinstein lawyer knows. Donna Rotunno estimates that around 20 percent are innocent, 20 percent committed the crime, and 60 percent were in a gray area in between.
Created: 1/22/2020, 11:56 AM
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