Accusations of sexual misconduct had swirled around the film producer Harvey Weinstein in New York and Los Angeles long before he was on trial in Manhattan.
Here is a timeline of events in Mr. Weinstein’s journey toward a verdict.
March 27, 2015
Prosecutors in Manhattan declined to prosecute Mr. Weinstein.
Ambra Battilana, an Italian model, told the New York City police that Mr. Weinstein groped her breasts during a business meeting at his office in Manhattan’s TriBeCa neighborhood. The next day, working with investigators, Ms. Battilana visited Mr. Weinstein at the TriBeCa Grand Hotel and secretly recorded him apologizing for the encounter.
But after a two-week investigation by sex-crimes prosecutors, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., announced that the evidence did not support charging Mr. Weinstein with forcible touching, a misdemeanor.
August 2017
Mr. Weinstein hired investigators to learn who was talking to reporters.
As reports began to circulate that journalists were looking into allegations that Mr. Weinstein mistreated scores of women over decades, the producer hired a private intelligence firm, Black Cube, to investigate what he described as “red flags” — or people who he suspected were talking about him to reporters.
Among those people was Annabella Sciorra, an actress known for her work on “The Sopranos,” who claims that Mr. Weinstein raped her at her apartment in Manhattan’s Gramercy Park neighborhood in 1993 or 1994.
Oct. 5, 2017
The Times and The New Yorker detailed accusations that Mr. Weinstein mistreated women.
The New York Times published an investigation detailing the accounts of several women who claimed that Mr. Weinstein abused or harassed them in incidents as early as 1990s.
Five days later, The New Yorker published an article about more women who were accusing Mr. Weinstein of sexual misconduct; it included Ms. Sciorra’s account.
The articles added momentum to the #MeToo movement and put pressure on the authorities to investigate the producer. Within a month, the New York Police Department said it was developing a strong case against him.
March 19, 2018
New York’s governor ordered a review of the decision to not charge Mr. Weinstein in 2015.
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo ordered New York State prosecutors to investigate why Mr. Vance declined to charge Mr. Weinstein in Ms. Battilana’s 2015 case. It had recently become clear that Mr. Vance had taken campaign donations from some of Mr. Weinstein’s lawyers.
The investigation placed Mr. Vance’s decision-making in the spotlight.
April 25, 2018
Mr. Vance put a new prosecutor in charge of the investigation.
Mr. Vance replaced the veteran sex-crimes prosecutor initially assigned to investigate Mr. Weinstein with a senior homicide prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi. The personnel change reflected a tension between the Police Department and the district attorney’s office over how to handle the case.
May 25, 2018
Mr. Weinstein was arrested.
Mr. Weinstein was indicted and surrendered at the First Precinct station house in Lower Manhattan on charges of rape and criminal sexual act.
The rape charge stemmed from an alleged assault on an unnamed woman at the Doubletree Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in 2013. She was later revealed to be Jessica Mann, a former aspiring actress from a small town in Washington State.
The criminal sexual act charge involved Lucia Evans, a marketing executive who told investigators that Mr. Weinstein forced oral sex during a casting meeting in his TriBeCa office in 2004.
Mr. Weinstein’s then-lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, set the tone for his defense by saying that while he might have engaged in “bad behavior,” he had not committed any crimes.
July 2, 2018
Prosecutors added charges.
Manhattan prosecutors announced they were adding charges to Mr. Weinstein’s indictment.
The new charges were related to accusations of forced oral sex at his TriBeCa apartment in July 2006 on an unnamed woman. She was later identified as Miriam Haley, a former production assistant on the television show “Project Runway.”
The new charges included predatory sexual assault, which requires prosecutors to prove that a defendant committed sexual felonies against two people and carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.
Oct. 11, 2018
A judge throws out a charge.
A judge dismissed the forcible oral sex charge against Mr. Weinstein involving Ms. Evans after prosecutors acknowledged that the lead detective in the case failed to inform them about a witness who had cast doubt on Ms. Evans’s account.
Three months before the indictment, the detective, Nicholas DiGaudio, had learned from the witness, a friend of Ms. Evans’s, that Ms. Evans had once claimed that she willingly performed oral sex on Mr. Weinstein in exchange for the promise of an acting job.
Detective DiGaudio never told prosecutors about this contradictory account, raising questions about the viability of the broader indictment.
Jan. 17, 2019
Mr. Weinstein changed lawyers, delaying his trial.
Mr. Brafman, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, withdrew from the case, delaying the trial schedule.
Mr. Brafman said he had uncovered several emails between Mr. Weinstein and his accusers, which suggested that aspects of their relationships were consensual.
July 11, 2019
Mr. Weinstein settled on a legal team.
Mr. Weinstein’s third set of lawyers, who represented him at trial, held a news conference outside State Supreme Court in Manhattan to announce their role. They had taken the case after Mr. Weinstein had hired and fired a second legal team.
The lead lawyer, Donna Rotunno of Chicago, said at the event that Mr. Weinstein had been “railroaded” by the #MeToo movement.
Aug. 26, 2019
Ms. Sciorra was added to the case.
Moving to shore up their case, prosecutors obtained a new indictment against Mr. Weinstein, allowing them to call Ms. Sciorra, the actress from “The Sopranos,” as a witness at the trial.
By her own account, Ms. Sciorra’s alleged encounter with the producer happened nearly 30 years before — too long ago to be charged as a separate count of rape under New York State law. But the indictment permitted her to testify under the theory that her statements would support the charges of predatory sexual assault.
Jan. 6, 2020
Weinstein was indicted in Los Angeles.
In a surprising move, prosecutors in Los Angeles charged Mr. Weinstein with raping one woman and groping and masturbating in front of a second within two days in February 2013.
The California charges were filed even as the parties in New York gathered on the first day of Mr. Weinstein’s trial in Manhattan to discuss jury selection and other legal issues.
Jan. 23, 2020
Ms. Sciorra testified.
Ms. Sciorra told a hushed courtroom that Mr. Weinstein had pushed his way into her apartment in the early 1990s, after giving her a ride home from a dinner party, and forced her onto a bed.
“I was trying to get him off me,” Ms. Sciorra told the jury, her voice cracking with emotion. “I was punching him, kicking him.” But Mr. Weinstein held her down, she said, adding: “He got on top of me and he raped me.”
Jan. 27, 2020
Ms. Haley, a former “Project Runway” assistant, took the stand.
Miriam Haley testified that Mr. Weinstein had held her down on a bed and forced oral sex on her in his TriBeCa apartment in July 2006, despite her protests.
“I’m being raped,” Ms. Haley recalled thinking.
She added, “I was in so much shock at the time that I just checked out.” Ms. Haley said she had sex with Mr. Weinstein two weeks after the first encounter at a hotel and “didn’t physically resist.”
On cross-examination, she acknowledged that, after the assault, she had continued to accept gifts from him and to correspond with him, sending him friendly emails.
Jan. 31, 2020
Ms. Mann, once an aspiring actress, testified.
Ms. Mann took the witness stand, accusing Mr. Weinstein of raping her in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room after he blocked her from leaving it.
He ordered her to undress, and injected his genitals with a medication, she said, adding, “I gave up at that point.”
On cross-examination, Ms. Mann acknowledged that she had consensual sex with Mr. Weinstein before and after the alleged assault, the last encounter being in 2016.
She broke down in tears when it was revealed in court that she had been sexually abused when she was younger. The moment came as she read a letter she had written to a boyfriend, in which she described Mr. Weinstein as “a pseudo father” who had given her “all the validation I ever needed.”
Feb. 18, 2020
The jury began deliberations.
The five men and seven women on the jury began deliberations after a monthlong trial that included testimony from six accusers in all, as well as from experts and other witnesses.
The jurors grappled with difficult questions. They had to decide if the relationships between the women and Mr. Weinstein were consensual and transactional, as his lawyers suggested. They also had to determine if consensual sex between Mr. Weinstein and some of the women undermined the claims that on other occasions, he assaulted them.
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