A jury of seven men and five women was selected today for Harvey Weinstein’s rape trial.
The arduous two-week process sets 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 defence was deliberately trying to keep young women off the panel.
The defence 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.
Weinstein attorney Arthur Aidala said “That was a different time in New York and on planet Earth.”
Three alternate jurors — one man and two women _—were also seated who will sit through the trial and take the place of any jurors on the main panel who can’t make it through to deliberations.
The 67-year-old Weinstein is the former studio boss behind such Oscar winners as Pulp Fiction and Shakespeare in Love.
He’s charged with raping a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulting another woman in 2006.
He has pleaded not guilty and said any sexual activity was consensual.
If convicted, he could face life in prison.