On Thursday morning, New York’s highest state court ruled to overturn disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction.
A panel mainly consisting of female judges in New York’s appellate court overturned the conviction and ordered a new trial.
“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the court’s 4-3 decision said, according to AP. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”
Weinstein will remain behind bars due to being found guilty of rape in a separate sexual assault trial in Los Angeles in 2022.
BREAKING.🚨
— Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) April 25, 2024
The New York Court of Appeals has ruled that the disgraced movie producer Harvey Weinstein did not receive a "fair trial."
His felony sex crimes conviction in New York was just overturned. pic.twitter.com/v7SH0tA4fn
The AP reported:
New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.
The court’s majority said “it is an abuse of judicial discretion to permit untested allegations of nothing more than bad behavior that destroys a defendant’s character but sheds no light on their credibility as related to the criminal charges lodged against them.”
In a stinging dissent, Judge Madeline Singas wrote that the majority was “whitewashing the facts to conform to a he-said/she-said narrative,” and said the Court of Appeals was continuing a “disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”
“The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Singas wrote.
